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LETTERS 



FLORIDA, 



SCENERY, t LI MATE, SOCIAL AND MATERIAL 
CONDITIONS, AND PRACTICAL ADVANTAGES 



'land of flowers " 



1883. 



BY JANE R. GRIFFING. 



LANCASTER, N. H.: 

PRINTED AT THE REPUBLICAN OFFICE. 
1883. 



LETTERS FROM FLORIDA 



SCENERY, CLIMATE, SOCIAL AND MATERIAL 
CONDITIONS, AND PRACTICAL ADVANTAGES 



— OF THE — 



"land of flowers; 



BY JANE E. GBIFFIXG. 



vcn 



%c^^riI77^\^v 



LANCASTER, N. H.: 

PRINTED AT THE REPUBLICAN OFFICE. 
1883. 



PREFACE. 



The following letters were contributed to a north- 
ern newspaper, early in the present year. They 
contain the results of several years' experience in 
Florida, including eighteen months' continuous resi- 
dence, and as the writer's object was to furnish truth- 
ful information to those who contemplate making a 
home there, it has been found desirable to republish 
them in this form. 



LETTERS FROM FLORH). 



No. I. 
The New England climate, among its many excel- 
lent characteristics, possesses in a pre-eminent de- 
gree that of stimulating a broad and unsectional love 
of our whole country, especially in winter. The 
man or woman who can face a cutting northwester 
on a January morning, or feel the east wind penetrat- 
ing with its deadly chill to the marrow of the best 
covered bones, who can walk the streets of l^oston 
with a foot deep of slush on the side walk, and a 
leaden sky overhead, while all the imps of the Polar 
regions lie in wait around ever)' corner, and still in- 
sist that New England, at all seasons, approaches 
most nearly to Paradise of any terrestrial region, is a 
hopeless Phillistine, and past the reach of argument. 
With the average human being, a thorough course 
of rheumatism, neuralgia and sore throat is sufficient 
to develop a sentiment of fraternal affection towards 
the inhabitants of more southern latitudes, which is 
pretty likely, if there is no insurmountable obstacle 



2 

in the way, to result in a visit to them at the earhest 
practicable moment. So I, having suffered the mis- 
eries of a Boston winter, as meekly as human nature 
will permit, finally decided that my only alternative 
was to run away and leave the snow and east wind to 
wreak their vengeance on some other victim. Much 
as I love New England, I am compelled sorrowfully 
to admit, that its winter climate in malignity and va- 
riety of wickedness, is well calculated to test to the 
utmost the affection of its otherwise favored inhabi- 
tants. This winter has seemed to me particularly 
exasperating, and visions of orange trees and beauti- 
ful birds and sunny skies were sure to be especially 
vivid when I shivered in the east wind, and the 
weather report afforded no encouragement to hope 
for anything better than "colder temperature, snow 
or rain." So I decided to go to Florida as soon as 
possible. That decision made, the next problem 
was how to get there. Now, as I have many times 
traveled between those two extreme geographical 
points, Florida and New England, and am well ac- 
quainted with all the discomforts, annoyances and 
inconveniences of each and every route, I found 
much more difficulty in deciding which to take than 
a stranger to southern travel, who is likely to be de- 
luded into a calm confidence and childlike faith, in 
the ease and comfort promised him by the menda- 



3 
cioLis transportation companies. I had tried every 
railroad to Florida, and had always found the last 
one the worst. As I recalled my various experi- 
ences with them I was almost ready to shed tears of 
self pity to think of the rough roads, the failures to 
connect, sleeping cars put on after midnight, break- 
fast at six o'clock, no breakfast at all, dinners that 
would ruin the digestion of an ostrich, and all the 
manifold miseries which usually have the effect of 
bringing about a state of mind in which the most 
amiable and long suffering Cliristian needs to be kept 
in strict confinement for twenty-four hours after ar- 
riving at Jacksonville, to prevent his committing hom- 
icide on the first railroad man he sees. I could go by 
steamer, to be sure, but the Atlantic ocean in mid- 
winter presents an aspect sometimes the reverse cJ 
enticing, and if I trusted myself to its tender mer- 
cies, contingencies were likely to arise, in which I 
would think with longing of ^;// method of travel in 
which my head and feet could retain the same rela- 
tive position to the horizontal. However, as it was 
a choice of evils, I, or we, for there were two of us, 
decided to take the steamer and trust to luck for a 
smooth sea. We sailed from Boston the middle of 
February on the City of Columbus — one of the new 
line between Boston and Savannah — and an exceed- 
ingly comfortable and well managed steamer we 



4 
found her to be. The voyage occupied three and a 
half days, and as the sea was obliging enough to be 
smooth, and the weather good, the usual miseries of 
ocean travel were greatly mitigated. There was 
nothing specially new in the trip, there never is, ex- 
cept in the first voyage, and even then, sea sickness 
seems to lack the usual charm of novelty. One 
feels as if one always had been and always would be 
seasick, and that the world in general is a miserable 
nauseated and nauseating world. But on this occa- 
sion, owing to the smooth sea, the passengers were 
able to maintain a reasonable degree of cheerfulness, 
and the ladies even did up their hair, an unfailing 
test of a pleasant voyage. Having vivid recollec- 
tions of the wretchedness endured in various Savan- 
nah hotels at different times, we spent no more time 
in that city than was necessary in going from the 
steamer to the train, so we decided to go to Jackson- 
ville by rail, there being no steamer till the next 
day. This portion of the railway route has been 
greatly improved during the past year. Formerly it 
occupied thirteen hours, and was the very climax of 
misery to the worn out traveler. The road was 
frightfully rough, and reminded one of a western 
corduroy road, the delays were interminable, and the 
dinner at Baldwin, unspeakably vile. Now, how- 
ever, the time is shortened to about sevep hours, the 



5 
new road is smooth, the cars new and clean, and 
wonder of wonders ! a really nice dinner is furnished 
at Waycross, something so unusual in southern rail- 
way travel, that it deserves to be recorded, with spec- 
ial blessings on the head of the person to whom it is 
to be attributed. No doubt the gratitude of thou- 
sands of tired and hungry travelers will follow him 
into Heaven for he is sure to go there when he 
leaves this vale of tears and bad eating houses. 

The scenery between Savannah and Jacksonville is 
the abomination of desolation, a hundred and sev- 
enty miles with not a town nor pleasant settlement 
along the railroad, not three houses indicating thrift 
and comfort, according to the New England stand- 
ard, only here and there a Georgia "cracker's" cabin, 
or a few negro shanties, the inhabitants thereof usu- 
ally perched upon a neighboring fence, to see the 
train pass, in dress and attitude more easy than pic- 
turesque, and evidently well satisfied with their lot 
and condition in life. The country is low and 
swampy, the soil worthless, producing little but the 
palmetto plant, and pine trees, which stand like for- 
ests of telegraph poles, for miles and miles, till one 
gets mortally weary of their stiff monotony. I have ' 
a special aversion to the southern pine, not because 
ite sap yields turpentine instead of maple sugar — for 
turpentine is a very useful article, and one might im- 



6 
agine a tree capable of maple sugar sacrificing itself 
to the public good so far as to produce the neces- 
sary but disagreeable commodity. But the whole 
a pect and manner of the southern pine is in har- 
mony with turpentine. It is always very tall, 
straight, and slender, with a few scanty branches at the 
top, not a leaf in the way of ornament, and not the 
slightest concession to grace and beauty of any kind. 
It seems to pride itself on its unbending stiffness and 
entire absence of ornament, and to look down with 
an air of conscious superiority upon other trees which 
pay some attention to the minor graces of line. I 
imagine I can hear it say, "The extravagance of the 
trees now-a-days is something dreadful. Look at 
the magnolias, see how they waste their substance on 
those great white flowers, and the cypresses, all rig- 
ged out in that fantastic moss, and even the live 
oaks, solid and respectable as they are, belonging to 
one of the best southern families, even they are 
wearing wreathes of that ridiculous stuff, instead of 
setting a good example to the younger generation of 
trees. But / shall never follow such extravagant 
fashions as long as my name is Miss Florida Pine." 
And they seem to straighten themselves up in their 
pride and conceit, till I want to wring their insignifi- 
cant little tufts of heads off their stiff little bodies. 
I have felt that same wicked inclination in regard to 



7 
some human Miss Florida Pines ! We arrived at 
Jacksonville early in the evening, but I see my letter 
is growing rather long, so I will leave my old mem- 
ories and new impressions of that place for another 
communication. 



No. 2. 
At the close of the war Jacksonville was a shabby, 
dirty, straggling little village, of no more importance 
to the country in general than a prairie dog town on 
the plains. Now it is a thriving, busy, growing city 
of perhaps twenty thousand inhabitants, and a winter 
population of nobody knows how many thou- 
sands more. It serves as a gateway to the "flowery 
land," as it is poetically, and some would say, rather 
imaginatively called. Every soul that comes to Flor- 
ida must pass through Jacksonville, and as souls usu- 
ally have bodies to be fed and carried about, and as 
this, of necessity, involves hotels and livery stables 
and boats and all sorts of conveyances, and as the 
souls and bodies before mentioned are always ex- 
pected to leave an equivalent in greenbacks for all 
these facilities, Jacksonville has grown in size and 
importance with every additional tourist or health 
seeker who has fled from the wrath of the north 
wind and the snow, and come to Florida in search of 



sunshine, flowers and oranges. It is essentially a 
northern town in a southern latitude, not only exist- 
ing, apparently, principally for the convenience of 
northern visitors, but with a large proportion of 
northern men in every hotel, store or office. Its 
busy, bustling ways are northern, and one sees con- 
stantly the familiar characteristics of northern towns, 
curiously mingled with southern customs and easy, 
careless manners. The streets swarm with negroes, 
and the mule pursues his ancient course in calm de- 
liberation before the same old cart and in the same 
primitive harness as in the old days "befo' de wah," 
while the heavy sand necessitates a slow and mod- 
erate style of driving which does not exactly remind 
one of Saratoga. But in all essential characteristics 
the place is northern. The hotels, especially, are as 
unlike those which one usually finds in southern 
cities as possible, and are owned and managed by 
northern men for the northern winter visitors. It 
has often been said that one must starve in Florida 
unless he could live on the air, which with all its de- 
licious qualities, has never been asserted to possess 
all the elements necessary to sustain life. Even an 
invalid requires a liberal supply of some other ma- 
terial, such as beef steak and bread and butter, and 
various other things, and Jacksonville has had the 
reputation of being more frugal in catering for visit- 



9 
ors than exactly accorded with their ideas of what 
their constitutions required. No doubt this unenvi- 
able reputation was well deserved in the past, and 
we know that a bad name of that kind has an adhe- 
sive quality, compared to which any known plaster 
is not to be mentioned. 

But, however well deserved, originally, this stigma 
has now, no foundation whatever. It would be dif- 
•ficult to find many hotels, even in our large cities, 
which furnish their guests with a greater variety, or 
better quality of food, while at northern summer 
hotels, with which, of course, they are more justly 
compared, there are very few that would not suffer 
by comparison with the best houses in Jacksonville. 
The St. James and Windsor have long stood at the 
head of the list, and have enjoyed a well deserved 
popularity, while the Everett, Duval, and Carleton 
have their full share of the custom and appreciation 
of the thousands who flock to Jacksonville every 
winter. The Carleton is the newest, and con- 
sequently, least generally known of the large hotels, 
but has already taken rank with the St. James, in ex- 
cellence of accommodations, and especially of its 
cuisine. There are not more than two or three 
hotels in the White Mountain region that furnish 
anything like so good a table, that of the Glen 
House being most nearly like it, and the proprietors, 



lO 
Messrs. Stimpson & Donnell, deserve great credit 
for the manner in which they cater for the throng of 
guests. There are, of course, many smaller hotels 
and boarding houses of various degrees of excel- 
lence and expensiveness, so that almost any require- 
ment can be met, from the four dollar a day style of 
accommodations, down to the seven dollar a week 
sort. But whether one pays four dollars a day or 
seven dollars a week, he receives as much for the 
money as at any northern summer resort. Of course, 
with the rapid increase in size and importance of the 
place, the resident population of Jacksonville has in- 
creased in wealth and numbers, and the elegant cot- 
tages and villas built by its citizens, indicate their 
prosperity and taste. Many of these dwellings are 
really beautiful, standing in gardens of orange trees 
and roses, and when we think of our own ice bound 
gardens, and plants carefully sheltered in the bay 
windows, from the frost and north wind, we are al- 
most inclined to envy those dwellers in eternal sum- 
mer, the fadeless verdure and bloom of their gar- 
dens. Along the banks of the St. Johns, a little out 
of the city proper, has grown up a beautiful suburb, 
Brooklyn and Riverside. The bank here is very 
high, and the broad sweep of the magnificent river 
is in lull view from every house and garden, affording 
a site for residences which few cities can equal in 



1 1 

beauty. The ground is level as a floor, and the 
dretty or imposing dwellings, and grounds lovely 
with orange trees, luxuriant vines and flowers, with 
perhaps a group of stately live oaks bearing aloft 
their dome of living green, and sweeping wreaths of 
Spanish moss, with the broad expanse of river glis- 
tening in the sunlight beyond, form a picture not 
readily forgotten. The suburban quarter will soon 
be within easy access to the city by those who can- 
not afford horses and carriages, as Jacksonville can 
now boast of a line of horse cars, an immense con- 
venience to both citizens and strangers. 

The great live oak trees constitute one of the 
most attractive features of this northern-southern 
town. The hotels may be wholly northern, but no 
other State or section shares with Florida the glory 
of these magnificent trees. Jacksonville is in many 
respects a commonplace town in its general appear- 
ance, and the heavy sand and scarcity of grass strikes 
a northern eye unpleasantly, but no town can be 
wholly commonplace with these long lines of stately 
trees, heavy with thick foliage, and garlanded with 
weird grey moss, and add to this one beauty, the 
glorious river, the golden sunshine, and the soft, 
balmy air, and one may easily forget the sand and 
other unattractive features of Jacksonville. Can it be 
that it is February, that my northern home is still 



V 



12 

locked in ice, and people wrap themselves in furs to 
face the wintry wind, and I sit by an open window to 
write this letter, fanned by breezes as soft as those of 
"Araby the blest," while across the street a row of 
great verdure laden trees tell of the summer that has 
no beginning and no ending here, but only grows less 
fervid in its heat, and occasionally borrows a breath 
from a northern October, when by some fiction of 
the imagination, people call it winter. 



No. 3. 
There are three classes of people who are disap- 
•pointed in Florida, and who, on returning north, give 
an unflattering description of it. One is, of course, 
those whose tastes and ideas are not in harmony with 
the conditions which they find here, who do not like 
a warm climate, or a new, undeveloped country, and 
are not interested in the scenery, the life, or the pur- 
suits vvhich to so many others are so fascinating. To 
such persons, Florida is tedious and uninteresting, 
and as wc can impart to others only the impressions 
we receive, they naturally and honestly report it to be 
"stale, flat and unprofitable." Then there are the 
chronic grumblers, people who can no more avoid 
croaking than frogs can abstain from using such vocal 
has orovidcd them with. 'Wcall 



13 
know plenty of such people, for whom the brightest 
day is only a " weather breeder," whose sugar is nev- 
er as sweet, nor lemons as. sour as they ought to be. 
Their troubles are always harder to bear than those 
of other people, and they seem to think that they en- 
joy the distinction of being singled out as the object 
of malicious spite- from the whole universe. Florida 
seems a favorite resort for this uncomfortable class, 
and in many instances, having left their own homes 
out of pure discontent with life in general, they find 
still a degree of natural and human imperfection here, 
and reseat it as a personal grievance. Perhaps they 
have left snow and ice and sleet and slush, colds and 
coughs, catarrhs, pneumonias, diphtherias, and the 
whole interesting list of winter inflictions, and when 
they get to Florida it rains for a day or two, or the 
temperature runs down nearly to freezing point for 
one night, and with expressions of disgust that ought 
to, but somehow does not annihilate the whole south, 
they exclaim, "And this is your lovely Florida cli- 
mate ! I might better have stayed at home." Not 
finding perfection in climate, hotels or anything else, 
and feeling that they deserve it, being so absolutely 
faultless themselves, they consider that every drop of 
rain, every degree of temperature above or below that 
which they regard as exactly the proper one, and 
every other imperfection, is in flagrant violation of 



14 

their vested rights. But as such people cannot be 
suited with anything short of heaven itself, their ob- 
jections must be regarded as abstract and general, and 
applying to the whole universe and plan of creation, 
not specially to Florida. 

There is another class of persons who are sure to 
be disappointed in coming to Florida, from the ex- 
travagance of their expectations. They read some 
poetical description of the scenery and life here, and 
they form a picture in their own minds of a land of 
endless summer, with roses blooming in January, 
trees heavy with golden fruit, with feathery palms and 
great white magnolia flowers, with cypress trees, and 
bamboo vines, with birds singing in the thick foliage, 
a lotus eating paradise, in which one can lie in a 
hammock and dream that this is the lost Atlantis, 
island of the blest, by some happy arrangement at- 
tached to our prosaic continent for the special and 
supreme beatitude of a few thousand favored mortals. 
Very likely every single feature of this imaginary 
Florida is either actual or possible here, and separate- 
ly or partially can be realized, but take it as a whole, 
it is the poetry, the dream, the fancy that can exist 
only in that airy and unsubstantial form in this world 
of unpoetic realities. There is always a large pro- 
portion of prose in the happiest conditions of mortal 
life, and to use a thoroughly New England illustra- 



15 
tion, brown bread and baked beans are usually rather 
in excess of ice cream, as articles of daily con- 
sumption. The ideal is never realized on this 
planet, but many persons can never fully relinqui h 
the expectation of finding it embodied in some coi- 
dition of life, more or less remote from that in which 
they live, however, as no one fails to see the prosaic 
facts of their own surroundings. In Florida, the poe- 
try does exist, but with a large admixture of prose. 
The flowers are here, (when they are cultivated), but 
also the barren sand ; the brilliant birds, but also liz- 
ards and spiders ; the glorious sunshine, but also days 
of dreary rain. The oranges must be bought, or if 
we own the trees they cost so much money and labor, 
that calculations of profits are likely to take the place 
of poetic enjoyment of their rich beauty. If one 
comes as a visitor, he must endure the usual discom- 
forts of travel and hotel life, and if he comes to re- 
side and make a living, he will find the crude condi- 
tions of a new and undeveloped country, and the av- 
erage amount of difficulty in obtaining a plentiful 
supply of greenbacks. One who comes here for 
either purpose, a winter visit, or a permanent resi- 
dence, will be sure to be disappointed, unless he ''dis- 
counts" all poetical descriptions, and takes into ac- 
count the inevitable imperfections of every known 
condition of life. In writing these letters, I wish to 



i6 
convey to my readers an accurate and truthful im- 
pression of everything, as far as I treat of it at all, 
and in any statement of facts or figures they can rely 
upon there being no exaggeration. But I write from 
the point of view of one who loves Florida, enjoys 
and appreciates its many beauties, and while fully re- 
alizing its disadvantages, considers them as being* far 
outweighed by its advantages. Perhaps I am a less 
severe critic from the fact that I always prefer to take 
a favorable view of anything when I can, rather than 
the reverse, and I am profoundly impressed with the 
impossibility of finding perfection in anything in this 
mundane sphere. I long ago made up my mind that 
prose as well as poetry, that weeds as well as flower^-, 
baked beans as well as ice cream, belong to the 
scheme of creation, and to accept them all with cheer- 
ful philosophy. The result is that I often find things 
better and pleasanter than I had reason to expect. I 
have no doubt that, if I go to heaven when I die, 1 
will find that the climate exceeds my expectations, 
that the angels are uncommonly agreeable, polite to 
strangers, giving them all necessary information as to 
the best hotels, or, with truly angelic hospitality, in- 
viting them to their own homes. 

But Florida is so far from heaven, that I may be 
accused of wandering from my subject. I am afraid 
I have left very little space for writing of the St. 



17 
Johns Riv^er, as intended in this letter. It is of all 
rivers, the most fascinating to me, with its vast flood 
of water, flowing silent and slow, with scarcely a per- 
ceptible current, from some mysterious source, such 
a:v gives birth to no other river in the vvorld. It has 
no water shed, no extensive region to drain, with 
countless tributaries pouring into it. It has only the 
rainfall of the narrow peninsular of Florida, instead 
of that of a great region like the Mississippi Valley, 
yet it is several miles wide in many places, and in 
depth from nine to thirty-six feet, and the source 
from which this great body of water flows remains a 
geographical mystery. It has, I believe, never been 
followed to its head waters in the swamps of the Ev- 
erglades, and is for a long distance navigable only for 
canoes. The only explanation of its immense vol- 
ume is that it has some subterranean connection with 
the ocean. The best scientific opinions agree, I am 
told, that it is not a river at all, but a lagoon, and was 
once a part of the ocean. The Atlantic surges once 
beat upon its western bank, and what is now East 
Florida, only a few centuries ago had no existence. 
A fringe of low sand bars and reefs such as are found 
now along the coast, served as the foundation, and 
the little continent builders, the coral insects, toilin<.r 
for ages, at last lifted out of the waves the banks and 
reefs upon which now the orange trees are growing. 



i8 
Oyster shells have been found deep in the earth 
twelve miles from the coast, and crustaceous fish such 
a 5 are never found in* ordinary rivers are in the St. 
Johns.^ One familiar with the geography of East 
Florida can imagine the slow building of the reefs 
that finally wrested from the ocean its sovereignty 
along the shore and gave to man, a gift from a tiny 
and insignificant insect, the forests and groves and 
gardens that bloom in fadeless beauty between the 
St. Johns and the Atlantic. As the reefs and sand 
bars rose out of the sea and became dry land, the 
imprisoned waters formed a lagoon and steamers go 
up and down the waters that are really a part of the 
Atlantic ocean, but are known as the St. Johns River. 
It is affected by the tide for more than a hundred 
miles from its mouth, though the current is scarcely 
perceptible, and as we sail along the placid waters 
that beat no more on stormy breakers upon the shore, 
we may wonder, if inanimate nature could think and 
feel, if they might not long to overleap the barrier 
that imprisons them in waveless calm, and join the 
foam crested billows of the wild, free ocean. The 
banks are covered still with the unbroken forest, ex- 
cept at long intervals a little settlement is growing up, 
and along the whole navigable course are only two or 
three villages of a few hundred inhabitants. The 
river is so wide that below Palatka, especially, as we 



19 
pass along in the steamers, the forest shore is too dim 
and hazy to distinguish the character of the trees, so 
that the scenery is monotonous and to many persons 
uninteresting, but if we run close enough U) either 
bank to see it distinctly, its wild vines and vveirel, 
phantom-like wreaths of moss, swaying silent!)- in the 
breeze, the shadowy vistas and dim recesses, the lux- 
uriant foliage and strange forms of vegetation, are 
full of suggestions to a vivid imagination, of some 
strange freak of creative fancy in our Mother Nature, 
when she changed the waters of the sea into a river, 
and hung its banks with garlands that might have 
been woven of the gray beard of Neptune himself. 



No. 4. 
Florida is the oldest, and at the same time the 
youngest State in the Union. Over three hundred 
years ago, St. Augustine was settled by the Spanish, 
and from that time until it was ceded to the United 
States in the year 1821, it was never wholl)' aban- 
doned. Its delightful climate attracted the attention 
of the French, as well as the original Spanish set- 
tlers, and over and over again it was the scene of 
bloody conflicts between the rival adventurers, or be- 
tween the foreign settlers and the Indians. Settle- 
ments and military posts were established, and had 



20 

for a time a flourishing existence, whose very site 
is now either utterly unknown, or a matter of dispute, 
while in St. Augustine the remains of the ancient 
wall that protected the town from the French and In- 
dians, the quaint old cochina houses, even the "pal- 
ace" of the governor general, tell of a time when 
Florida was a part of Spain, and belonged to an or- 
der of things unknown in any other portion of our 
vast territory. As one wanders through the narrow 
streets of the slumbering little town, and notes the 
slowly crumbling ruins of that far off time, and hears 
still the ancient Spanish names at every turn, it al- 
most seems as if the fierce old Spaniards, when they 
departed from their new world province, laid a spell 
upon this little city, so that the romance and mystery 
of their isolated life there should remain forever as 
an atmosphere into which the stir and rush of mod- 
ern life could hardly penetrate. Their fierce passion 
and ambition have been stilled for centuries, the clash 
of their swords and their strange battle cries, have 
long since ceased to disturb the calm of this summer 
air, only the peace and the stillness remain, and St. 
Augustine basks in the sunshine by the shining sea, 
and dreams of the centuries that have passed over it, 
before the railway and the steamship, the telephone 
and the winter visitors had been conceived of as pos- 
sibilities. 



21 

The traces of Spanish domination at St. Augus- 
tine are not all that hnks Florida to the almost for- 
gotten past. Here and there, in different localities, 
settlements were made, and plantations started, in 
some instances, according to the local traditions, 
proving profitable and successful, but after a time 
from one cause or another, abandoned. A wealthy 
Englishman named Dunn settled at the lake once 
called by his name, but now Lake Crescent, living 
there, it is said, for several years, yet after this lapse 
of time there is not the slightest trace to tell what he 
did, or tried to do. About a hundred years ago, 
while Florida was a dependency of England, after- 
wards re-ceded to Spain, an Englishman named Turn- 
bull, a man of wealth and influence, procured a char- 
ter from the English government, granting him land 
and special privileges, and brought over here a col- 
ony of six hundred people, from the island of Mi- 
norca. He was to give them land and other assist- 
ance, in payment for a certain period of labor. He 
settled with them along the Halifax river, cultivated 
indigo and sugar, in which he was very successful, 
and lived in considerable state, as a small sovereign 
over his six hundred subjects, as he regarded them, 
or rather as slaves, for he treated them in a most ty- 
rannical manner, violating all his promises to them, 
and keeping them in an actual condition of slavery. 



/ 



/ 



22 
Finall)', however, his career was cut short by a coun- 
tryman of his, who visited Florida and determined 
that the power he had usurped should be wrested 
from him. Returning to P>ngland, the visitor im- 
parted to the government the state of affairs with 
Turnbul! and his colonists, the charter was revoked 
with all its grants and privileges, Turnbull disap- 
peared, and the poor Minorcans scattered about, most 
of them settling in St. Augustine, w^here their descend- 
ants form a considerable portion of the population. 
Of the settlement on the Halifax river, with dwellings 
and sugar houses, not a trace remains. It seems to 
have vanished like a smoke wTcath from the earth, 
and that is a rather strange peculiarity in the fate of 
"nearly all the earlier Florida settlements. 

In c^\cr\- other new territor}', the early settlers, if 
only fur traders, have taken and held a foothold, 
which served as a foundation for a permanent settle- 
ment, and ever\' pioneer, who "blazed" his way 
through the trackless forest, or traversed the lonely 
country in his "prairie schooner," has driven his stake 
somewhere and kept it there. Hut in Florida, colony 
after colo?iy, \-illage after village, plantation after 
plantation, has passed away like names written upon 
the sand, and washed away by the waves. 

It seemed as if the time had not come for man to 
claim his birthright in the sunny land which the 



23 
Spaniards poetically named l-dorida, the "land o{ 
flowers." After the state was ceded to the United 
States, and before the war of the rebellion, it was 
very sparsely inhabited b}' a class of people who 
had neither the desire nor the .ibility to develop the 
resources of the countrv' and attract immigration. 
They lived b}' lumting and fishing or by keeping 
droves of cattle, and were a rough, lawless, ignorant 
class, with few exceptions, obe>'ing no laws sa\e those 
of the "Regulators," and regarding with suspicion 
and dislike all who came among them with the inten- 
tion of culti\ating the soil, and fencing in the land, 
thus interfering witli their cattle ranges. With the 
exception of the small communities of St. Augustine, 
Jacksonville, and Tallahassee, and their vicinity, almost 
the whole of Morida was a wild, unbroken wilder- 
ness. During the war military operations brouglit 
man}- northern men here, and some of them, fasci- 
nated b\' the lovely climate, remained and made per- 
manent homes. Then others were attracted here, and 
invalids began, to escape from the rigors of the north- 
ern winters to its balmy air, wnth its opportunities for 
out of door life, and Fh^rida ^\as well started upon its , 
new career of prosperity, after its Rip Van Winkle 
sleep n( three hundred years. The spell was broken 
at last. The thrifty yankee mind began to see possi- 
bilities in orange culture that had never occurred to 



24 

the careless southerner, and these two classes, health 
seekers and money seekers, came in greater and 
greater numbers every year, until a tide set towards 
this long neglected land that, rolling still in yearly 
increasing volume, has not yet reached its flood. 

The development of the last ten years is wonder- 
ful, the population having increased more rapidly 
than in any state or territory, except, perhaps, Dako- 
ta, while the increase in capital and the value of proper- 
ty is in still greater proportion. Of course Florida 
has suffered its full share of woes from "land sharks" 
and dishonest speculators, men who had no inten- 
tion of identifying themselves with the interests of 
the country, or conferring any benefit upon it, but 
cared only to sell their lands, no matter upon what 
false inducements. Such men are always the curse 
of new countries, and retard their development, not 
only directly by starting "paper towns" and selling 
worthless property at fancy prices, but by the indi- 
rect consequences of their fictitious enterprises, the 
distrust and suspicion inspired in all who know of 
their sharp practices, towards any one who claims to 
have as his object the making of a town or the set- 
tlement of some unimproved region. The genuine 
and legitimate efforts naturally suffer from the dis- 
trust caused by the dishonest ones, and no doubt 
more than one thoroughly genuine enterprise has 



25 
been smothered by this suspicion and want of confi- 
dence which might otherwise have developed into a 
permanent and valuable aid to the development of 
the state. At any rate, from this or other causes, 
many enterprises begun apparently in good faith, 
have languished through a brief existence, and died 
a natural death at last. A (ew however, have taken 
root and grown apace, that of Sanford, for instance, . ' 
being a notable example of deserved success. Gen- 
eral Sanford, a few years ago, settled upon a grant 
of some twenty thousand acres' and proceeded to lay 
out a town, and attract to it the citizens who form an 
indispensable element in future cities. His efforts 
were attended by unusual good fortune and San- 
ford is now a flourishing town, nearly as large as Pa- 
latka, and with unlimited expectations for the future. 

The town of De Land, started but a few. years ago, "^ 
is an instance of the possibilities of growth in a new 
Florida settlement which combines a fairly good loca- 
tion with intelligent enterprise and energy and suffi- 
cient money to make them effective, and it also shows 
how readily people can be directed to a new place, 
if the proper means are employed. The location is 
not exceptionally good, having no water communi- 
cation nor unusual beauty of any kind, being mere- 
ly the high rolling pine land of which so much is 
found in East Florida. It is, however, healthy and 



26 
pleasant and favorable fur orange grcnving, and these 
advantages have been so well utilized and advertised 
by Mr. De Land and his associates, that a town is 
springing up almost as if by magic, with good store>, 
hotels and churches, and is quite sure to prove a 
valuable business and social centre for that part of 
the state. Palatka, of course, cannot be classed 
among the new Morida towns, as it has long been 
an important river port and centre of the winter trav- 
el, but it shares the wonderful new development of 
the state, and almost daily grows in size, importance 
and beauty, with fine hotels and conveniences of 
every kind for its thousands of winter visitors. It 
serves also as a distributing point for the travel and 
business of the growing settlements east and west of 
the St. Johns, and if it is wise in its own interests, it 
will do all in its power to promote their growth and 
prosperity, as it will find in them not rivals, but val- 
uable aids and auxiliaries to its own growth and im- 
portance. In fact, nothing could be more absurd 
and childish than the jealousy and rivalry often seen 
between the citizens of different places in Florida, 
each having its own characteristic advantages, and 
serving its own important purpose in the general 
development of the state. . They do not interfere 
with, but promote each other's interests. The lungs 
and heart of the liuman body might as well set up 



27 
a rivalry as to their claims and relative importance 
in the bodily economy, as for one town to be jealous 
of another in Florida. The more the better, for each 
and all, should be their motto, and will be, when 
they study the matter from the standpoint of enlii^ht- 
ened self-interest. 



No. 5. 
One new town whose course thus far has been one 
of many vicissitudes, and less uninterrupted success 
than that of Sanford, but which seems to ha\-e a 
bright future before it, is the village of Crescent 
City, on Lake Crescent, about thirty miles south of Pal- 
atka. All infant towns must pass through a period in 
which they are liable to a variety of unfortunate cir- 
cumstances, which may be compared to the whooping 
cough and measles of human infancy. In the case c»f 
Crescent Cit}', these infantile disorders proved unusu- 
ally severe, and threatened more than once to put an 
end to its budding existence, and would have done so 
had it not possessed, like some children, too much 
vitality to be easily killed. It is just eight years, since 
a stranger from New York, wandering about the 
country in Putnam county, came upon a scene that, 
from his first view of it, so fascinated him that he de- 
termined to possess it. He saw before him a beauti- 



28 
fill lake, with curving shore sweeping to the right and 
left, its high banks covered with cypress, live oak and 
magnolia trees. Back of this lake, half a mile, was a 
smaller one with clear, limpid water and between 
them, the land rose to a height of seventy-five feet, a 
smooth plateau, descending gradually to the larger 
lake on the east. As Florida is almost universally 
low and flat, this comparatively high elevation with 
its superb lake view, seemed to the northern stranger 
a spot intended by nature for the homes of people 
who could appreciate its beauty and healthfulness, 
and he wondered to see it lying wild and unimproved. 
He learned on inquiry, that years before it had been 
a cotton plantation, but in the vicissitudes of the war 
it had been abandoned, and by a course of tax titles, 
judgments, imperfect deeds, and various irregularities, 
the title had become so entangled that no one had 
been able to secure a complete ownership of the land. 
A settlement had been made a few years before, by 
some Alabama and west Florida families, but they 
were people unaccustomed to pioneer hardships, and 
after a short time, sick and discouraged, they aban- 
doned their uncongenial enterprise, and except three 
families, returned to their former homes. So the fair 
plateau lay waiting for the coming of some one who 
could break its spell of loneliness and desolation. 
The nortljcrn stranger proved to be that one, and he 



29 
went to work, first, to disentangle the title, which he 
accomplished after great expenditure of time and 
money, and then associated with him a man who 
seemed to be a suitable person to co-operate with 
him in developing the possibilities of the place. Sur- 
veyors were employed to lay out the new town, a 
steamer purchased to make daily trips to Palatka, and 
other heavy expenses incurred. Then came the first 
of the misfortunes which threatened the existence of 
the embryo city. The original purchaser, in the series 
of failures that followed for three or four years the 
"crash of '73," lost the capital upon which he had 
relied to meet the expenses of his enterprise, and his 
partner proving to be a man of no corresponding pe- 
cuniary resources, he was obliged in the very first 
year to leave the infant town to its own devices, while 
he entered into business in the north to earn the 
money to meet existing obligations, and go on with 
the enterprise. Then followed five years of great 
discouragement to the little town. There was no one 
to take the place of the original projector, and carry 
out his plans, but he would not abandon them, and 
determined to succeed in the end, he managed to 
keep the property free from incumbrance, but that 
was all he could do until his debts were paid. It was 
five years before he was sufficiently free from finan- 
cial embarassments to give any personal attention to 



30 
the place, and during that time it kept ahve and slow- 
ly improved, attracting a few people who had 
friends living there, or learned by accident of 
the beauty and natural advantages of the loca- 
tion. A year ago the original projector spent a lit- 
tle time looking after the interest of what had be- 
come the favorite enterprise of his business life, and 
by his efforts and the momentum gradually accumu- 
lated during the years of apparent inaction, the 
place took a new start, and now seems to have 
safely passed the period of whooping cough and 
measles. It has had, all these years, a daily mail, 
stores, etc., but has been kept back seriously by the 
want of good hotel accommodations. There was a 
hotel, but so badly kept much of the time, and so 
small as to afford little inducement for visitors to 
seek the place. Since last winter, however, an effort 
has been made to furnish more satisfactory enter- 
tainment, and there is a prospect of its being en- 
larged and improved for next winter, to meet the 
increasing needs of the growing town. The best 
assurance, however, of a really good hotel in the 
near future, is in a small house opened this winter, 
as an experiment, by a ycning man who had had no 
experience in the business, but had an innate con- 
viction that he could ''run a hotel." I have arrived 
at the conclusion that a hotel proprietor, like a poet, 



31 
"must be born, not made." A man not intended by 
nature for the business, can no more do it success- 
fully than a blacksmith can write Paradise Lost. It 
seems to require a peculiar genius to keep guests in 
a state of serene confidence in their steak and cof- 
fee, and otherwise contented and happy, and woe be 
to the man who mistakes his vocation, and thinks he 
can run a hotel when he ought to be keeping a 
pawnbroker's shop. He might better never have 
been born, for his guests will be ready to commit 
murder and suicide at the same time. Mr. Milo M. 
Potter, the fortunate man who has not mistaken his 
vocation, has escaped these dangers, for he is a born 
hotel proprietor. Limited, however, as hjs resources 
have been this winter, his house being much too 
small for its present purpose, he has succeeded in a 
really remarkable degree in providing so well for the 
comfort of his guests, that those who come, stay as 
long as they can, and when they go away, invariably 
speak a good word for "I'otter's" of Crescent Cit\'. 
As this year's experiment has proved so satisfactory 
in its results, Mr. Potter has already arranged for the 
building of a new hotel, that will accommodate be- 
tween one and two hundred guests, which will afford 
all necessary comforts, with courteous and thought- 
ful attention to all who come. 

Florida enjoys one advantage over other new 



32 
states, which cannot but constitute one of the most 
important elements in its future development. 
Among the people who have already settled here 
and continue to come for the purpose of making 
permanent homes, is an unusually large proportion 
of families of wealth and influence in the region from 
which they came. The emigration to the West 
has been largely composed of poor men who went 
out there to make their fortunes and "grow up with 
the country," a valuable class of citizens, energetic 
and ambitious, who have built up the West with 
marvelous rapidity and laid the foundation for the 
culture and refinement of the future. But the unde- 
veloped West off"ered few attractions to people who 
had means to live comfortably at home, and tastes to 
enjoy the manner of living which is only possible in 
old and settled communities. It was only the practi- 
cal men, influenced by practical motives, who settled 
the western country. But Florida off"ers attractions 
to many who can afl"ord to disregard such considera- 
tions as were of necessity ruling ones with the west- 
ern pioneers, people who enjoy at home the best so- 
cial opportunities, and perhaps, the reputation and 
influence earned by professional, literary or scientific 
success. They are in many instances compelled to 
avoid the rigors of the northern winters and seek 
health and recuperation in the soft air of F'lorida, or 



33 
they are attracted by the new interests they find here, 
so utterly different from anything in northern rural 
life. Many of them have only winter homes here, 
returning north for the summer, but others remain 
all the year, from reasons of convenience or health. 
Crescent City shares with other places in Florida the 
inestimable advantage of numbering among its citi- 
zens a goodly proportion of families of cultivation 
and refinement, liberal means and excellent position, 
in the northern communities from which they came. 
Many of them remain during the summer, finding in 
their new interests partial compensation for the want 
of the more varied and active life of the north. This 
class of permanent residents are principally occupied 
in orange culture which requires constant attention 
during the summer months. Some of them have been 
here several years, have passed through the experi- 
mental period, and become thoroughly familiar with 
the conditions of the life here. Of course, they made 
many mistakes at first, especially in cultivating the 
ground, the best practical farmers finding that north- 
ern and southern farming are so utterly different, that 
a thorough knowledge of one is of but little assistance 
in the other, and also that the few southern people 
already living here had made little progress in solv- 
ing the difficult problem of how to induce their dry 
sandy soil to produce crops of any kind. It seems a 



34 
little singular that in all the three hundred years since 
Florida was first settled, the immense value of the 
orange tree commercially, was fully realized first by 
northern men. The southern people themselves 
say that "the yankees first taught them how to make 
money out of oranges." The Spaniards planted 
groves, but apparently more for ornament than with 
any idea of future profit, even after the cession to 
the United States, very little was done in orange cul- 
ture till the "yankees" came, after the close of the 
war. The site of Crescent City, one of the finest loca- 
tions for orange growing in the state, was used as a cot- 
ton plantation, though the soil is too poor in quality to 
make cotton planting profitable. The settlers from Ala- 
bama, however, had a more correct idea of the mine of 
wealth that could be found in this barren soil, and 
planted orange groves, those w4io remained having 
now^ secured by their perseverance the fortune which 
the others lost by going away. The northern people 
who settled here, immediately saw the chance for 
profitable investment of capital and labor and ha\-e 
all engaged more or less in orange culture. The orig- 
inal projector of the town had in his mind this val- 
uable interest, as a practical inducement for permanent 
residents, in addition to the exceptional attractions 
of the location, its elevation above the ordinary level 
of Florida land and consecjuently purer and drier air. 



35 
Many persons suffering from asthma, particularly, 
can live here in comfort, when even a few miles distant, 
the greater humidity of the atmosphere affects them 
unfavorably. In beauty and picturesqueness, the lo- 
cation has no superior in Florida, at least, not in the 
orange growing portion of the state. In west Florida, 
the region about Tallahassee, there is high rolling 
land, but it is a cotton growing country, too far north 
for oranges, and with a rich soil, which always, in the 
south, implies more or less malaria. Crescent City 
possesses every natural advantage possible in Florida, 
accessibility, being on deep water communication 
with Jacksonville, superior healthfulness and un- 
equalled beauty and picturesqueness. These advan- 
tages are appreciated by all who visit the place, and 
now that its period of discouragement is passed, it 
only remains with its citizens themselves, by the ex- 
ercise of enterprise and public spirit, to make it as 
nature intended, the garden spot of Florida. 

It was the intention of its original projector to 
make Crescent City an educational centre that would 
attract to itself those families who, while desiring or 
needing to live in Florida, are not willing to sacrifice 
the education of their children. There is reason to 
think that this dream will be realized, as great in- 
terest is taken by the leading citizens in all projects 
having for their object the best school adx'antaees. 



36 

and there are under consideration various plans for 
the establishment of a high school in which pupils 
can be fitted for college or business. There is at 
present a good school under the charge of an ex- 
cellent teacher, Mr. Covvden, who shows an intelligent 
comprehension of the educational needs of a new 
and ambitious place, and by his active public spirit 
has been principally instrumental in organizing a 
library association and collecting funds for a building 
to be used for the library and reading-room, and also 
for public entertainments. Other valuable im- 
provements have been projected and commenced, 
and the little village that so long lay slumbering by the 
lake, is now fully awake to its own needs and possi- 
bilities. 

And so, all over Florida, new life is awakening, 
and along the slow current of the St. Johns, in the 
busy streets of Jacksonville, in the dreamy stillness 
of St. Augustine, in villages starting into life at the 
magic touch of some ninteenth century man, in orange 
groves and cotton fields, from Indian River to Tampa 
Bay, from Jacksonville to Okeechobee, even in the 
wild, lonely swamps of the everglades, new currents 
are moving and new forces arc stirring into vivid mod- 
ern life the fair sunlit land which for three hundred 
years, has been like an enchanted princess, waiting 
for the adventurous knight who was to arouse her 



37 
from her long sleep, waiting till the spirit oi the 
nineteenth century came and broke the spell. Now, 
the sleep of centuries is over, and at a bound, Flor- 
ida takes her place in the life of the modern world, 
and has scarcely to hold out her hand for the wealth 
that is pouring in upon her. Those who realize the 
great climatic and commercial advantages of Florida 
cannot but wonder that they were so long ignored, 
but congratulate themselves upon their own superior 
wisdom and that of their generation, as compared to 
our respected but somewhat old fogyish and slow 
predecessors. The enchanted princess, now that she 
is fairly aroused, proves to be an exceedingly sensi- 
ble and wide awake young person with no nonsense 
about her, and fully in sympathy with the practical 
ideas of the generation to which she finds herself be- 
longing. The new Florida is so utterly unlike the 
old, of even twenty years ago, that she is scarcely to 
be recognized as the same in business and social con- 
ditions, but the change is all in the direction of pro- 
gress, enlightenment, wealth, culture, and refinement, 
and but a few more years of this rapid development 
will be needed to place the state in the position na- 
ture intended her to occupy, pre-eminent as a winter 
home, unrivalled and unapproachable in her own 
characteristics, and happy and prosperous beyond 
any other section of this favored land. 



33 

No. 6. 
As the conditions of life in Florida, especially 
those connected with r.iral pursuits, are so utterly 
different from country life in the north, with which, 
of course they are most properly to be compared, 
the difficulties to be overcome, by the northern set- 
tlers are likely to prove of a decidedly novel and un- 
expected character, and may be illustrated by an 
amusing incident in the early experience of one of 
the northern families. They were determined to 
raise poultry, and found that Florida is the very par- 
adise of the domestic feathered tribe, or would be, if 
it were not for one or two other creatures. The ser- 
pent that tempted our Mother Eve was not more full 
of guile than the Florida "chicken snake," a large and 
formidable looking, but perfectly harmless reptile, 
except for its unscrupulous habit of gratifying its 
fondness for fresh eggs and young chickens without 
taking its pocket-book along for the purpose of 
paying the owner a proper equivalent for them. As 
it can crawl through a very small hole, and is not in 
the habit of advertising its movements by un- 
necessary noise, it can neither be kept out by locks 
or bolts, nor is it of any use for the owner of the 
chickens to rush out in abbreviated nocturnal cos- 
tume when he hears the mother hen's loud objections 



39 
to the unceremonious appropriation of her offspring. 
The mischief is done and the robber reptile safely 
out of the way when the owner appears with a lan- 
tern in one hand and a club or pistol in the other. 
Another creature with the same epicurean taste for 
"spring chicken" is the 'possum, whose reputation in 
outwitting his natural enemy, man, is too well known 
to require any elaboration. The stories told in 
illustration of this characteristic may be somewhat 
exaggerated, and its "shamming death" may be, as 
some assert, less an intentional deception than a 
fainting fit induced by fright, but making all due 
allowance, it certainly exhibits a degree of cunning 
that would do credit to a — well, say a Wall street spec- 
ulator, for instance. On one occasion a 'possum 
hunt, in which the younger male portion of my fam- 
ily were engaged, resulted in the capture of a half 
grown live specimen, which was decided to need a 
few weeks feeding before it would be fit for culinary 
purposes, A box was made for its reception, cov- 
ered with slats. There was a difference of opinion 
as to whether the slats were close enough, but the 
boys decided that they were, and the creature was 
placed in his new abode plentifully supplied w^ith 
various kinds of food, everything that was supposed 
to tempt a 'possum's appetite. He appeared to ap- 
preciate his liberal bill of fare, and went through it 



40 
as if he had boarded at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and 
knew what a tip-top table was, but would not dis- 
dain such fare as we could provide him. In fact, 
his appetite was something appalling, and I began 
to estimate the cost of fattening him. He manifest- 
ed not the slightest timidity, but ate and slept like a 
civilized 'possum, all day. At bed time he was 
sleeping peacefully, as if his conscience and his di- 
gestion were equally sound. The next morning he 
was gone, the slats were undisturbed, but a few hairs 
adhering to two of them indicated the manner of 
his escape. He was too wise to try to get out when 
he would be sure to be seen, and evidently thought he 
might as well get a day's board at the expense of his 
captors. Now it will readily be imagined that with 
snakes and 'possums leagued against him, the path 
of the person who aspires to fortune by means of 
poultry raising is beset with difficulties. 

In the case of the family alluded to, their at- 
tempts had all failed from one or another of these 
causes, and their hopes of final success all rested upon 
one hen sitting upon the regulation number of thirteen 
eggs, in a fairly well protected, but not quite 'possum 
or snake proof hen-house. The family had occasion 
to be absent from home for a few days, and after 
much consultation, decided to protect the hen against 
her natural enemies, by shutting a dog in the hen 



41 
house with her, but fearing that he might disturb 
her in some way, they tied him by a rope just too 
short to enable him to reach tlie precious nest. 
Then leaving food and water for both dog and hen, 
they took their departure, feeling that they had pro- 
vided for all possible contingencies. Three or four 
days after they returned, and as they approached 
within hearing distance, they were alarmed by a fu- 
rious barking in the hen house. Hastening to the 
scene of action, they opened the door, and there was 
the dog, his mouth foaming with excitement, leap- 
ing and springing the length of his rope, while a 
large 'possum sat calmly on the edge of the box 
containing the precious nest, making a meal of the 
hen, apparently without the slightest concern in re- 
gard to the dog. The creature's sagacity enabled 
him to understand that as long as his enemy could 
not quite reach him, there was nothing to fear from 
his barking. I am not quite sure whether the un- 
lucky experimenters in poultry abandoned their at- 
tempts after that unfortunate experience, but if they 
persevered, they doubtless found means to circum- 
vent the wicked 'possum and the guileful serpent. 

The difficulties in the way of raising poultry were 
not greater nor more unexpected than those en- 
countered in every direction, by the northern settlers. 
All of them planted orange groves, as a matter of 



42 
course, but with characteristic yankee energy, they 
cast about for ways of making money while their 
trees were growing. Many of them had sufficient 
means to Hve upon during that period, but others 
had invested the whole of their small capital in set- 
ting out their groves, building, &c., and were not 
content to live in "cracker" style on "hog and hom- 
iny" until their trees became profitable, so they 
tried sugar cane, vegetables, strawberries, &c. They 
were met at the outset by the impossibility of ob- 
taining reliable information as to the proper meth- 
ods of cultivation. The original settlers were content 
to live in the most primitive style, and in some cases, 
families who owned a thousand head of cattle never 
had a drop of milk nor an ounce of butter on their 
tables, while as to a variety of fresh vegetables and 
fruits, they were generally regarded as representing a 
kind and amount of labor uncomfortable even to 
think of, and only possible to those painfully active 
people, " the yankees." The few southern families of 
the better class who were living here, had made some 
little effort^ in;^ vegetable culture, but as their own 
methods were still of the experimental order, each 
one gave different advice to the new comers, so the 
northern men were obliged to rely upon their own 
judgment and the result of their experiments. Even 
as to the time of planting different crops, or such an 



43 
apparently simple question as whether to " hill up " 
sweet potatoes, or keep the ground level about them, 
there were conflicting opinions. There were no es- 
tablished methods in anything, and as the soil and 
climate are so utterly dififerent from those of the 
north, the practical northern farmer found that his 
previous experience was of no value whatever, and 
that he had no advantage over a "city man" who had 
a dim impression that a hoe is an implement not ex- 
actly adapted to write with, and that either persim- 
mons or peanuts grow on trees, in fact the "city 
man" had rather the advantage, as he had nothing to 
?/;/learn, while the farmer was pretty sure to lose a 
year or two in forgetting useless knowledge. 

Of course all their first attempts invariably failed. 
Sugar cane, planted at heavy expense, languished 
through a sickly existence of a few months, but kept 
its sweetness, if it had any, to itself. Peas ungrate- 
fully refused to return even the seed used in planting 
them, and corn evidently resented the indignity of 
being planted upon such beggarly soil, and sulked 
till its leaves turned yellow in the hot summer sun 
yielding not even a "nubbin" to encourage the en- 
terprising experimenters. If, by some lucky con- 
junction of the southern agricultural planets, one 
crop gladdened the soul of its owner by a thrifty and 
promising growth, it Vv^as sure to be destroyed by the 



44 
hogs. Now, a northern farmer will ask, contemptu- 
ously, "couldn't they keep the hogs out?" Ah, but, 
my dear sir, you don't know Florida hogs, you never 
dreamed of any variety of swine that could be com- 
pared to them in their distinguishing characteristics. 
If you saw one you would be as likely to think it a 
porcupine as a hog. It is principally snout and legs, 
with an attenuated body, evidently planned with ref- 
erence to slipping through the smallest crack in a 
fence. Having been one of the early experimenters 
whose sad experience I am relating, I can write feel- 
ingly upon the subject of hogs. We thought we had 
a fence that would keep them out, but one day I saw 
one of them walk up to that fence, contemplate it for 
a moment with an oblique look of calm self-confi- 
dence that reminded me of the present governor of 
Massachusetts, and then — deliberately climb over it 
with as much ease and grace as that natural climber, 
a boy, could have done it. My feelings, as I saw the 
performance, may be more readily imagined than de- 
scribed ! The place being on the bank of the lake, 
the fence was run out several rods into the water, but 
this proved not the slightest obstruction to the enter- 
prising porkers. They might have kept a swimming 
school with success and credit to themselves, as far as 
their proficiency in the aquatic art was concerned, 
and if that fence had extended two miles into the lake, 



45 
they could still have easily swam around it. We tried 
boys, to supplement other means of protection, but 
boys have a habit, especially during a hot afternoon 
in this sleep promoting climate, of lying down in the 
shade of a tree and taking a nap, waking up just in 
time to see the last hill of potatoes or a head of cab- 
bage finished by the industrious beasts, who certainly 
set an example of energy and enterprise which the 
other native inhabitants of Florida would do well to 
emulate. 

This difficulty, however, as well as many others, 
has been overcome by the permanent northern resi- 
dents, the shot-gun having been occasionally used as 
a cheap and effective means of preventing depreda- 
tions from hogs, a much less objectionable use to 
make of that weapon than "bulldozing" at elections, 
a method of securing a "fair and free expression of 
the will of the people" happily not in vogue in Flor- 
ida. 

As it is now several years since the northern set- 
tlers began their experiments in cultivating veget- 
ables, they have learned what can and what cannot 
be done, and the methods by which such success as 
is possible can be attained. As vegetables can be 
ready for market before they are even planted in the 
north, they are enormously profitable when success- 
fully cultivated. I am not able at this writing, to 



46 
give exact figures, but know of instances in which 
from five to seven hundred dollars an acre have been 
realized, and this is less than reported profits made 
by some other men. But there are many difficulties 
to be overcome. Irrigating is necessary to prevent 
the danger of failure from dry weather, and most of 
the land in Florida requires heavy fertilizing for veg- 
etables. 

Cabbages, cucumbers, and tomatoes are very prof- 
itable, but do well only on rich heavy land, the kind 
known here as "low hammock." Cucumbers are 
subject to the risk of being killed by a slight frost, 
but cabbages are free from that danger. 

Egg plant also does well and can be grown on 
" high hammock" land, which may be described as 
intermediate between "low hammock" along the riv- 
er and lake banks and the pine land. Melons have 
not been extensively cultivated for market, but there 
seems no reason why they should not be profitable, as 
they grow well on any soil here, and attain a size and 
quality which would make a New Jersey market gar- 
dener turn green with envy. If I ventured to tell their 
average size and weight, my reputation for strict 
veracity would be seriously endangered, so I will 
not say, as I came near doing, that a large one 
might be scooped out and used as a boat in case of 
an emergency, but will modestly affirm that no one 



47 
In the north knows what a water melon is capable 
of being in its congenial soil and climate. It 
ripens in May, and lying on the hot sand, it 
gathers into its rich red heart all the sweetness 
of the glowing tropical sunshine, and — I 
might grow eloquent on the subject, but 
people who only know the watermelon by its insipid 
northern variety would not appreciate its poetical 
possibilities, so I check myself in time. Strawberries 
also are a tempting subject for a northern pen. Think 
of having them ripe and sweet and luscious in Feb- 
ruary ! But out of consideration for the feelings of 
those who cannot come to Florida, I refrain from 
dwelling upon the epicurean pleasures which we who 
are so fortunate as to be here, enjoy, and will write only 
upon the practical aspect of strawberry culture, and 
its capabilities in the way of profits. The result of 
several years' trial proves that on land exactly adapt- 
ed to them, strawberries are enormously profitable, 
but there is very little such land in the best portions 
of Florida. On ordinary soil, by heavy fertilizing, 
they do well generally, but are not sure every year. 
Perhaps every other year, or sometimes for two years 
in succession, they will fail, and hence cannot be re- 
lied upon as a regular source of large profit. On the 
whole, market gardening in Florida can be made 
profitable, if thoroughly and intelligently studied, 



48 

with careful reference to the pecuHarities of the soil 
and climate, but will fail every time if there is any 
lack of those essentials to success in ajiy business, 
industry, perseverance and intelligent application of 
ways and means to the object sought. 



No. 7. 
When people ask me, as they frequently do, if 
orange growing is a profitable business, I usually re- 
ply, "Yes and no, it is, and it is not." It has its con- 
ditions of success which must be observed or failure 
is inevitable, and it is not an exception to the general 
rule that we never get "something for nothing." It 
happens now and then that a man will make a fortune 
by some brilliant stroke in the way of speculation, or 
a happy accident, but these cases are the hundred 
thousand dollar prize in the lottery which has ninety- 
nine thousand blanks. Most men attain only such 
success as they legitimately earn, and a fortune usual- 
ly represents a lifetime of industrious application and 
intelligent, practical judgment. There is, of course, 
a great difference in the results that are possible in 
various kinds of business, and here orange growing 
has a great advantage, but to succeed in it, as in any- 
thing else, one must fulfill certain conditions, and 
bring to the goddess F'ortune the liberal offerings she 



49 
is in the habit of demanding as the price of her fa- 
vors. She is as we all know, a very exacting god- 
dess, and will sometimes treat her votaries with the 
utmost contempt when they have merely omitted one 
little requirement, and in this business of orange 
growing, in which she seems to take a special interest, 
the man who is lacking in practical judgment, indus- 
try or patience, might as well relinquish all hope of 
her smiles being bestowed upon him. He is sure to 
come to grief and pose as a " melancholy example" 
and warning to young men. 

When a northern man comes down here, as ignor- 
ant of the special characteristics, habits and wants of 
the orange tree as he is of the vegetable productions 
of the moon, and with no more intelligent idea of the 
conditions of success in that particular line of busi- 
ness than a mule has of tlie Darwinian theory, and 
expects to make a fortune raising oranges, I am never 
very confident of his success, especially if, as in many 
cases, he thinks that no study or special knowledge 
is necessary, or that it comes by instinct. Hundreds 
have come here, apparently with the belief that all 
that is necessary is to stick a thousand or two trees 
into the ground, and that being done and perhaps a 
^colored man employed to take care of them, they re- 
'turn north with the serene expectation of a fortune 
making itself for them. In many instances they do 



so 
not even come here, but send money to some one 
else, perhaps a relative or friend, or very likely the 
projector of some new town, who offers in his brilliant 
prospectus to plant and take care of groves for pur- 
chasers at the lowest possible rates. Now, in what 
other business does a man expect to acquire a valua- 
ble productive interest not only without his personal 
supervision, but without any practical knowledge of 
what is essential to success in it, so as to judge 
whether or not the person employed to manage for 
him is properly fulfilling his trust? We know very 
well that while there are honest and trustworthy men, 
there are, unfortunately, also a great many who can- 
not be trusted to attend faithfully to the interests of 
any one but themselves, and in this case, not only the 
man's honesty must be assured, but his judgment and 
practical efficiency also, .as he may ruin or neglect the 
interest intrusted to him while honestly believing that 
he is doing all that is necessary. It is not always 
sufficient for a man to do as well for another as he 
would do for himself. The loose and careless man- 
ner in which hundreds of men are investing money 
in orange groves for other men to manage is far from 
creditable to their business sagacity, for it implies a 
belief that this one business is an exception to the 
rule whose operation they recognize in every other pur-' 
suit, that to succeed in anything, a man must under- 



51 
stand thoroughly well the nature and requirements of 
the business, whatever it is in which he is interested, 
and then look after it himself. How many men 
would succeed in mercantile life, for instance, if they 
simply employed another man to purchase a stock of 
dry goods or groceries and manage everything, the 
proprietor furnishing the money w^ithout a glimmer 
of an idea as to how it ought to be expended. Yet 
this is practically, what many are doing, when they 
send money to Florida to be invested in an orange 
grove. It is all very well, if they do it out of surplus 
capital and will not suffer if the venture fails, but I 
know of men who are making serious sacrifices for 
what they confidently expect will prove in a few years 
a perfect Bonanza of an investment. But those who 
trust others to care for their groves are not the only 
ones who are likely to be disappointed. Men who 
give them their personal attention may by lack of 
practical judgment, of energy and thoroughness, or 
comprehension of the nature and habits of the orange 
tree, make a complete or partial failure. There are 
so many instances of such results that many persons 
seem to regard orange growing as a sort of lottery 
with more blanks than prizes. I heard of one man 
saying, lately, " I came down here to see if an orange 
grove would be a good investment for me, and after 
looking into it carefully, I am convinced that there is 



52 
too much uncertainty in it. For instance, a grov^e 
may be planted on land with a hard clay subsoil and 
when the tap root reaches that, it can go no further 
and the tree amounts to nothing." Now this man at 
least exhibited better judgment than many who see 
710 risks and no conditions to be met, but the absurdi- 
ty of his conclusion is in the idea that chance is an 
element in orange growing. As if the nature of the 
subsoil cannot easily be ascertained, and suitable land 
found, and as if, by proper study and attention all the 
habits and needs of the tree cannot be perfectly un- 
derstood. There is nothing difficult, nothing myste- 
rious, nothing which an ordinary mind cannot readily 
comprehend in the culture of the orange, yet many 
otherwise intelligent persons are lacking in the close 
observation in such matters and habit of reasoning 
upon what they observe which enables others, per- 
haps much less generally well informed to judge cor- 
rectly. There are many persons who do not know 
an orange from a persimmon tree, when they come 
here, yet are so observing and have such good judg- 
ment in that particular line, that they become intelli- 
gent and skillful orange growers in a year or two. 
As an instance, a lady from a northern city, utterly 
ignorant of tree culture of any kind, had a small 
grove planted, and employed a man to do the work 
in it, beginning by plowing, according to the economi- 



53 
cal but ruinous habit oi most orange growers. Before 
he had finished, she walked over the place when he 
was at work, and noticed a root several feet long 
lying on the ground. In reply to her question about 
it, the man said that his plough caught in the root 
and tore it up. The lady being a very practical per- 
son began to reflect that the tree probably had no 
more roots than it needed, and if they were con- 
stantly torn up and cut off, the process of repairing 
would naturally interfere with that of growing. From 
that time never a plough entered that grove which 
was well fertilized and cultivated with the hoe, and in 
a very few years the magnificent growth and heavy 
bearing of the trees proved the practical good 
sense of the conclusion which one would suppose 
would be an obvious one to any person of good 
judgment in such matters. There are some persons 
who seem to be in sympathy with the processes of 
nature, and to have a kind of subtle intuition in re- 
gard to them, and there are others who can more eas- 
ily solve a problem in Euclid than some simple ques- 
tion in regard to cultivating trees. Yet even for 
such ones, the example and advice of those who 
have been particularly successful is always available. 
There is much less uncertainty of results in orange 
growing than in ordinary farming, in which the state 
of the weather at certain times often determines the 



54 
success or failure of the crop. In wheat growing, for 
instance, a few days of intensely hot weather at one 
time, or of rain at another, may utterly ruin the crop, 
while in orange culture, a little more or less rain only 
implies a little more or less rapid growth, as the trees, 
if planted in good soil, after they are well started, do 
not suffer from dry weather. There is only one risk 
which cannot be guarded against, that of frost. In the 
northern part of Florida, this is a serious one, but as 
far south as Palatka, and east of the St. Johns River, 
it is very slight. One mistake into which many 
have been led by interested representations is that of 
planting groves on the west side of the St. Johns, 
and this is the more serious if the locality is north of 
Palatka. As far south as Sanford the difference is 
much less, but for a hundred miles south of Jackson- 
ville the "water protection" of the broad St. Johns 
is of great importance, as the cold northwest winds, 
the most dangerous to the trees and fruit, are soften- 
ed in temperature several degrees by passing over 
the water. I have known frosts even in Palatka, 
which reduced the banana plants to wilted rags, 
while at Cresent City, thirty miles distant, not a leaf 
was injured. In the last eight years, as far south as 
this and Indian River, the trees have never been in- 
jured in the least and the fruit only once. This mat- 
ter of location is a very important consideration and 



55 
enters into orange growing as one of the elements of 
success. 

Any person who thinks of engaging in it, should 
take great pains to ascertain the best orange grow- 
ing region, and avoid the unnecessary risks of the 
northern part of the state and the west bank 
of the St. Johns. The Indian River country 
is justly celebrated as the perfection of an orange 
growing region, but it is still very inconvenient to 
reach, and infested by insects in the summer, while 
other sections are equally free from frost, much more 
so from insect pests, and more readily accessible. 
Fruitland Peninsula, on which Crescent City is situ- 
ated, Sumpter, Orange, Marion and Volusia counties 
are all excellent orange growing regions, and by 
taking into account the matter of health, special 
quality of soil, &c., in the particular place selected, 
there would be no danger of making a serious mis- 
take in planting a grove in any desirable and con- 
venient portion of those counties. 

One mistake that has been made heretofore, in a 
large proportion of cases, in the experimental period 
of orange culture, is that of underestimating the cost 
of bringing a grove to the age of profitable produc- 
tion. When little was known of the best methods of 
cultivation, it was naturally to be expected that men 
would fall into this error, especially if they were ac- 



56 
customed to the rich soil of the north, but in the 
last few years, there has been no reason for want 
of definite knowledge regarding the expense of cul- 
tivating a grove, except the misrepresentations of 
persons interested in inducing people to buy land 
and settle in Florida. 

Orange growing is a legitimate business, subject 
to the ordinary laws which govern every kind of pro- 
ductive interest, and any one who assumes that to 
make a fortune by it is an easy thing, requiring lit- 
tle expenditure of capital or thought, makes a very 
serious mistake. There are few kinds of business 
which yield so large a return, in the end, for the 
capital invested, but for ten years there is no profit, 
only a constant outlay. This is a serious difficulty 
to persons of small means. Although the trees be- 
gin to bear in three or four years, if well cultivated, 
the yield is small at first and one cannot expect 
much profit in less than ten years from planting. 
During that time, the grove must be thoroughly cul- 
tivated, and though the orange is a tree of great vi- 
tality, it is subject to one or two unhealthy condi- 
tions and one enemy, the scale insect, which must 
be guarded against with ceaseless vigilance. Then 
the appetite of the tree is something appalling. To 
call it a "heavy feeder" is to u.se altogether too mild 
an expression to convey an adequate idea of its 



57 
enormous demands upon the soil, and — the purse of 
its owner. The quantity of muck, bone meal, salt, 
and other unheard of things that tree will consume 
is enough to make the hair of an orange grower of 
ordinary financial resources turn gray. " How^ much 
bone meal, &c., do you think can be profitably used?" 
I asked lately of an experienced cultivator, having 
in mind a grove w^hose demands seemed to increase 
rather than diminish, the more liberally they are sup- 
plied. " O," was the disheartening reply, "there is 
no limit ; an orange tree will use all it can get, and 
ask for more." And that seems to be the case. If 
a person has Si grove of a thousand trees, he can 
keep a man and team at work all the time procuring 
muck for them, and can buy commercial fertilizing 
till he has no money left to pay store bills, and the 
trees will grow and grow, and smile at him gratefully 
with their rich glossy leaves, as if to say, "That is 
all right, we appreciate your attentions, you seem to 
know how an orange tree ought to be treated, but a 
little more muck and leaf mould will give more body 
to our soil, and a little more bone meal will give us a 
more liberal supply of phosphates, and you know 
how much phosphates we are obliged to use, and 
while you are about it, two or three tons of salt will 
help us to retain moisture about our roots and fur- 
nish us some valuable chemical elements besides, 



58 
and don't forget a thousand or two loads of mulch- 
ing. No tree accustomed to the luxuries of life, as 
we are, can be comfortable in this hot sand during 
the summer unless it is kept cool by mulching." And 
if he is a wise orange grower, he will say, "Very 
well, you shall have all these things, and as many 
more as you want, if I have to go barefoot and live 
on hominy to get them," and his trees grow and 
grow, and by and by their branches bend to the earth 
with their weight of golden fruit. Then the soul of 
their owner rejoices, and his wife goes in silk attire 
if she chooses, only gingham is more comfortable 
here, and after years of hard work, sacrifice and 
patient waiting, they are rich people. The trees are 
very considerate, and do their best to lighten these 
sacrifices by beginning to bear as soon as possible, 
and long before they can afford to yield a good crop 
every year they do so every alternate one, thus show- 
ing a grateful appreciation of the efforts made in 
their behalf. Somehow, I cannot get rid of the fancy 
that the orange tree is alive. It responds so readily 
to every attention bestowed upon it. It struggles so 
bravely against neglect or poverty of conditions, and 
exhibits such energy and intelligence in seeking for 
its food, being a self-respecting tree, and anxious to 
earn its living as far as possible, even before it attains 
the dignity and independence of a grown-up, full- 



59 
bearing tree. In one instance, a cart-load of rich 
muck was thrown down a few feet from a tree, and 
left there for several months or a year. When it was 
removed, a large root was discovered in it a foot or 
so above the surface of the ground. The tree had 
observed that muck, and sent up a root into it to 
forage for supplies. Now a tree that has so much 
sense ought to be able to speak and must certainly 
have some sort of a soul. At least, I always feel as 
if it had, and looking at its glory and beauty of foli- 
age and fruit, I could not complain if it insisted up- 
on sharing my own breakfast and dinner, and ex- 
pressed its preference for beefsteak or quail on toast 
over muck and bone meal. 

As to the profits of orange growing, when all the 
necessary conditions have been complied with, they 
have not been exaggerated. A good bearing grove is 
a fortune. ' I will give one or two instances, in which 
I know all the facts. The Oakwood grove, three 
miles from Crescent City, consisting of about three 
hundred bearing trees, twelve years old, yielded this 
last year, which was a very unfavorable one, twenty- 
five hundred dollars. It covers little more than three 
acres, has been well cultivated and fertilized, but has 
not yet nearly reached its full bearing capacity, while 
the expenses hereafter will be very light, as when the 
tree is grown, it requires little attention. Another 



6o 
instance will show the value of a grove as an invest- 
ment of capital. Two years ago David Carll, of 
New York, a well known ship builder, purchased a 
grove of twelve hundred trees, ten years old, also 
near Crescent City, for which he paid twenty thou- 
sand dollars. This last year, the second of his own- 
ership, he sold fifteen hundred boxes of oranges, re- 
ceiving for them, net, on the average, two dollars and 
seventy-five cents a box. It will be seen that his in- 
vestment already yields a high rate of interest, and 
it will increase steadily for several years yet, as a 
grove does not reach its full bearing capacity in 
twelve years. As the orange is a very long lived 
tree, it is a permanent source of income after the first 
ten years. These results are attainable by all who in 
purchasing or cultivating an orange grove make a 
judicious choice of locality, have capital and patience 
to wait till the trees are old enough to be profitable, 
and observe the conditions which the nature of the 
tree has fixed for its healthy, vigorous and product- 
ive growth. But orange growing is not a business 
for the unpractical, the impatient, or the indolent. 
Those who engage in it must await the slow processes 
of nature, and for many a long year must bring their 
offerings of toil and sacrifice to her shrine, before she 
rewards them with that object sought by most men, 
and often in vain, in countless avenues of labor and 



6i 
endeavor, — a fortune. 



No. 8. 

There is no condition of life equally suited to the 
tastes and requirements of all persons. Human be- 
ings, like plants, have their appropriate soil and cli- 
mate, and suffer in body and mind if placed in un- 
congenial surroundings. It is inevitable, therefo-re, 
that many persons find the climate, ways of living, 
and occupations in Florida unsuited to their natures 
and needs, and the life that supplies all that another 
person may desire, will prove to them dull, uninterest- 
ing, and in every way unfavorable to health and hap- 
piness. It is, therefore, very important that all who 
contemplate making a home here, should carefully 
consider, not only the actual facts in regard to Flori- 
da, but the question of whether the conditions here 
are adapted to their own individual tastes, habits and 
requirements. One thing especially that should be 
taken into consideration by city people, is the quiet, 
monotonous character of the life here. 

There is not a city in Florida except Jacksonville. 
The other places that are called cities are really only 
small villages and very few of them. The country is 
thinly populated, in many regions only beginning to 
be settled and improved, the conditions of living still 



62 

crude and Imperfect, the life entirely rural, and with 
an utter absence of exciting interests or diversions of 
any kind. No one should come here, unless compelled 
on account of health, who does not enjoy out of door 
life and occupations, and who cannot find in sunny 
skies, in lakes and rivers, in shadowy forests, in new 
strange forms of vegetation, in trees and vines and 
flowers, all the interests and occupations that nature 
affords, substitutes for society, for theatres, concerts, 
lectures, for the morning papers, for all the succession 
of new, fresh interests that follow each other in a large 
city so that every day brings something to feed and 
stimulate the thoughts and emotions. 

There are many men and women who cannot thus 
substitute nature for human interests, whose only 
place is on the city pavement, in the rush and whirl 
of city life. They must form a part of the great cur- 
rent of humanity that pours through city streets, and 
can breathe freely only in the air surcharged with 
vivid, electric human life, vibrating to human pas- 
sions, and heavy with human woes. In that life they 
are their best and brightest, developing all their finest 
powers and strongest energies, but they stagnate in 
the country, droop and languish and starve for the 
want of their own appropriate mental food. Such 
persons should never come to Florida, for they will 
find nothing here that supplies what their natures de- 



63 
mand and should have. It is true that they are often 
told, especially if they are women, that they ought to 
be contented wherever it seems desirable for them to 
live, and if the masculine partner in the conjugal co- 
partnership finds it necessary to live in Florida, or 
any other rural region, the other member of the do- 
mestic firm is wickedly selfish if she objects, but all 
the same, if nature's intentions are not thwarted with 
impunity, and either a man or woman who undertakes 
to live in Florida, who ought to live in New York, 
can do so only at the cost of heavy sacrifice. This 
cost must often be paid, for the sake of health or 
means of living, and when necessary it should be done 
cheerfully and bravely, but there are so many discon- 
tented people everywhere, and they are so uncom- 
fortable and unsatisfactory to themselves and every 
one else, that I dislike to see the number increased un- 
necessarily. One object of these letters is to prevent 
people coming to Florida who ought to stay away. 

There is one class of persons for whom there is no 
doubt of the wisdom of coming here. Those whose 
health necessitates a residence in a warm climate, who 
are threatened with consumption or any form of 
lung or throat disease, or who from want of vitality, 
or some constitutional peculiarity, and unable to en- 
dure the cold of a northern winter, find here a cli- 
mate, which, while not so warm as to be enervating, 



64 
is yet so mild that the weak or diseased lungs grow- 
strong, and the feeble body finds its strength conserv- 
ed, instead of wasted in trying to resist the sharp, 
cold and wintry blasts of the north. The claims of 
Florida as a sanitarium for this class of invalids, have 
not been exaggerated. Thousands have come here, 
pale and weak, racked by colds and coughs, by in- 
cipient consumption or bronchitis, and find in this 
soft air the healing balm which no materia medica 
can furnish, and which is beyond the reach of the ut- 
most skill of the best physician to administer. There 
are many persons, not affected by any actual disease 
of the throat or lungs, who yet languish and sicken 
during the northern winter, not only from the effects 
of the cold, but from so much indoor life, with its 
artificially heated and more or less vitiated atmos- 
phere. To such ones, as well as those who are gen- 
uine invalids, the Florida winter seems a little fore- 
taste of Heaven, and they bask in its sunshine and 
breathe its balmy air with never ceasing delight. 

The climate, as I said in a former letter, is not ab- 
solutely perfect, but partakes more or less of the im- 
perfection that is so generally observed on this uni- 
verse, at least that portion of it with which we are 
acquainted. It is sometimes rainy and disagreeable 
and often when there is a howling gale at the north 
with the usual winter accompaniments of snow and 



65 
ice and sleet, we have here, so to speak, a faint echo 
of it, in a cold rain or a fall of temperature to forty 
degrees, or perhaps once during the winter to thirty. 
Whereupon everybody shivers and grumbles and 
growls, and imagines that from forty degrees above 
zero, to ten or twenty below would be but a trifling 
addition of discomfort. These "cold snaps," how- 
ever, are of very short duration, and are very soon 
followed by warm sunny weather. Many object to 
the Florida climate as being too changeable Such 
objections arise usually more from that habit of fault- 
finding which is constitutional with some persons, 
than from an intelligent judgment. While there are 
frequent, though of necessity, never severe changes, 
there are very few countries in the world in which 
the climate is more equable, except in the tropics 
where the summer heat is continuous. At Nassau, a 
favorite resort for invalids, the range of temperature 
is less than in Florida, and for persons in an advan- 
ced stage of consumption, the climate is better. There 
are even a few who thrive better in the hot climate of 
Cuba, but both Nassau and Cuba are extremely de- 
bilitating to the majority of people. There are very 
few who can bear such constant heat without great 
loss of strength and energy. Almost every one who 
has spent even a few months in a hot country with no 
changes, has had at times an intense longing for a 



66 
sharp north wind and a touch of frost, even though 
they prefer and require a mild climate. Very few 
northern people could live in Florida without the 
tonic of an occasional breath of the north wind, so 
that that which is charged as a defect is really a sav- 
ing virtue. 

There are many invalids who either receive no 
benefit, or very little, in Florida, who ought to and 
could recover their health entirely, if they would ex- 
ercise intelligent care and judgment in regard to 
their habits of living. One can get sick or keep sick, 
here as well as everywhere, by using the means to 
bring about that undesirable result. Attention to the 
ordinary rules of health, to food, clothing, ventila- 
tion, &c., is indispensable of course, as the healing 
virtues of the climate can be counteracted by a suffi- 
cient degree of stupidity, and the Florida climate is 
often held responsible for results which should be at- 
tributed to imprudent exposure, bad food, close, dark 
sleeping rooms and want of fire in rainy or chilly 
weather. In short, common sense and intelligent 
judgment can no more be dispensed with in Florida 
than in other places in which they are considered 
essential to health and happiness. 

For persons suffering from any form of nervous 
derangement, as well as from incipient consumption, 
Florida is a haven of refuge, and its air the balm of 



6; 

healing. In most of those cases, the soothing qual- 
ity of the air, the quiet life, and the healthful out of 
door interests, will restore the exhausted vitality, rest 
the wearied brain, and give tone to the disordered 
nerves. But there are many persons who cannot bear 
heat, and require the bracing and stimulating influence 
of the sharp winter cold. Those should never come 
to Florida, and should be able to judge, by their ex- 
perience in summer and winter at home, of the folly 
of their attempting to live in a warm climate. 

The general healthfulness of Florida is remarkable, 
the death rate is very low, and there are no epidemics or 
prevailing diseases as in the north. There is but one 
drawback to its perfect healthfulness in summer, as 
well as in winter, and that is malaria. Solon Robin- 
son once wrote, "There may be malaria in Florida, 
but as I have never gone about in the swamps look- 
ing for it, I have never found it." He could have 
found plenty of it in his own town, Jacksonville, and 
must have kept his eyes shut if he did not discover 
its existence. I have never believed in the policy, 
to say nothing of the honesty, of misrepresenting 
the facts in regard to Florida. If it cannot bear the 
frank statement of the unvarnished truth, then we 
who believe in its great advantages for residents and 
health seekers have been sadly mistaken. The false 
and exaggerated representations of interested parties 



68 
have had much to do with the many disappointments 
which have had their natural and legitimate effect, 
and embittered against Florida many who might have 
been its friends had they not been deceived and de- 
luded. For my part, I do not wish to be responsi- 
ble for people coming here who ought to have re- 
mained in the north and would have done so, had 
they been told nothing but the truth. The fact is, 
that there are very few localities in Florida absolutely 
free from malaria, or rather the causes which induce 
the class of complaints always attributed to that rath- 
er vague poison in the air, which in many cases, 
probably does not exist at all, in that form, but is 
simply the vitiation of the air from bad drainage of 
houses, want of ventilation or other unsanitary con- 
ditions. For one thing, we must not forget that a 
warm climate always predisposes to what we call 
"bilious diseases," and when there is the least possi- 
ble malaria, its characteristic symptoms will be de- 
veloped to a greater or less degree, and in many 
cases there will be derangement of the liver or slight 
fever, simply from the effect of the warm climate, 
even if there was no more malaria than on an ice- 
burg in the polar sea. However, it does exist here 
in most places, but varies very much in different lo- 
calities. The greatest blessing which Florida enjoys 
is its poor sandy soil, for all those sections where the 



69 ^ 

land is rich and heavy are very sickly, while on thel^ 
high, rolling pine lands, there is practically no sick- 
ness at all, except what people bring about by im- 
proper habits of living. St. Agustine is entirely 
free from malaria and many cases of fever recover 
there, coming from less healthy portions of the state. 
On "low hammock" and swamp land, there is, of 
course, considerable fever, while on "high hammock," 
although there is more than in the pine woods, it sel- 
dom assumes a serious or obstinate form, even in the 
neighborhood of lakes and rivers. In good locations 
it is much less difficult to control than was formerly 
the case in Indiana and other western states, where 
in many places, the new settlers shook with fever and 
ague during most of the year. Although I have 
known of a few cases of severe malarial fever, they 
are exceptional, the disease being usually of a mild 
type, and capable of being controlled by the usual 
remedies and careful habits of living. 

Natives of the country are usually healthy, in spite 
of very unhygienic conditions, and children who have 
"half a chance" thrive like the weeds, which is saying a 
great deal. Northern people living here have had 
such a variety of experiences that it is difficult to 
give an accurate report of them. There are some 
who cannot live in Florida. They require a colder 
and more bracing climate, and are out of their nat- 



70 

ural element here. Others suffer more or less from 
fever for a year or two till they are thoroughly accli- 
mated, having occasional attacks which grow lighter 
and more easily controlled as they become accustomed 
to the climate, and after that enjoying excellent health. 
There are still others who come from the north and 
remain here summer and winter, with never a trace of 
J fever or illness of any kind. One lady from Connec- 
ticut, who has lived at Crescent City since its first set- 
tlement, seven years, has never had so much as a 
headache. Her daughter, a rather delicate girl, re- 
turned north once to spend the summer, but came 
back to Florida in August, saying that she not only 
was not as well as here, but suffered more from the 
heat ! Another lady, from New York, living for sev- 
eral years in the pine woods of Fruitland Peninsula, 
the region between Lake Crescent and the St. Johns, 
not only enjoyed excellent health there, but often says 
she would come to Florida to spend the summer, in 
preference to spending it in the north. These are not 
exceptional instances. There are many similar ones, 
and a very large proportion of the northern men who 
settle here, work in their orange groves and gardens 
during the whole summer without suffering in health. 
Very many, however, suffer more or less severely dur- 
ing the first year or two, and arc much better for 
spending the summer in the north. It is at least, a 



71 
safer course for people coming to Florida to live, to 
anticipate such a necessity, and arrange their plans, 
if possible, with reference to spending three months 
of the year in the north. 

There are many who find the summer heat less 
trying than the "heated terms" of the north. They 
suffer little from the steady warm weather, with al- 
most daily showers, and the cool trade wind of the 
afternoon. Certainly the summer is much more en- 
durable than that of the southwest, as far north as 
Kentucky and Missouri, and to many persons it is ex- 
ceedingly pleasant. To many others, however, it is 
very trying from its long duration, from the hot sand 
under their feet, and the sun blazing down from direct- 
ly over their heads, and still more from the wearisome 
monotony and utter absence of exciting interests or 
social diversions. This is a question to be determin- 
ed in each case only by experience, no one can judge 
for another in regard to it, and the only persons to 
whom the Florida summer is almost sure to be adapt- 
ed are those in consumption. They should, in near- 
ly every case, remain during the whole year. Then 
if the winter proves too cool or too changeable, they 
will find a blessed healing in the long, warm, sunny 
days, the evanescent showers that bring scarcely a 
cloud into the deep blue sky, and the soft breezes 
that come laden with refreshment from countless 



72 



leagues of ocean. 



No. 9. 
There are many men who from some form of pul- 
monary trouble, or perhaps merely lack of vitality, 
cannot live in the north with comfort or fair degree 
of health, and are compelled to seek a mild climate, 
yet are obliged to earn their living, and cannot over- 
look practical considerations in deciding upon a per- 
manent residence in Florida. It is not enough that 
their health can be restored here, they must also se- 
cure the means of living. Although the poet con- 
soles the impecunious by singing for their encourage- 
ment, *'Man wants but little here below nor wants that 
little long," somehow most people seem to want enough 
to render the wherewithal to pay for it, a matter of 
some importance, and as for the duration of those 
wants, life insurance people are the only ones who 
have any definite idea of a man's "expectancy of 
life," so for all practical purposes of planning how to 
get a living one might as well expect to live to be a 
hundred and fifty. As to living in Florida the ordi- 
nary wants of civilized humanity must be met here as 
elsewhere, though many demands, such as clothing, 
fuel and shelter are much less imperious than in the 
north. Still, Florida is not, as is often asserted, a 



73 
"poor man's paradise" for though the absolutely 
necessary expenses of living are less than in the norths 
it is not as easy for a man without any money to "get 
a start" as in the west, unless he can "turn his hand 
to anything." 

A good mechanic can find plenty of work, but white 
farm labor is rather out of its element, as the demand 
for ordinary farm service is fairly well supplied by the 
negroes, though wages are high for the quality of the 
work, it being done usually in the loose, careless, free 
and easy manner characteristic of the southern negro. 
A young or unmarried man can, of course, do very 
well, but for one with a family to support and no re- 
sources but his own labor, the progress tovv^ards as- 
sured comfort and independence is very tedious and 
slow. Even if he has a little money to start with, a 
few hundred or a thousand or two dollars, if he at- 
tempts orange growing or market gardening, his small 
capital is very soon exhausted, and that which would 
be a liberal amount to start with in the west, seems 
only a drop in the bucket here. An orange grove is 
too expensive for a man of small capital, although, if 
his health absolutely necessitates a residence here, if 
he has no alternative, but must take the chances of 
utter failure of health in the north, or of some hard- 
ships here, there is no question as to the wisdom of 
his choosing this horn of the dilemma, and "pulling 



74 
through" the hardships here, as many have done suc- 
cessfully, with much satisfaction and credit to them- 
selves, in the end. It is not everyone, however, who 
has the energy, perseverance, and cheerful strength 
of will, to endure a long period of trial and discour- 
agement. 

There may be conditions of health or age which 
render one unable to bear pioneer hardships, or it 
may be merely the lack of that iron in the blood, 
that force and vigor and stamina in the character 
which give the power to master circumstances, in 
stead of being mastered by them. A man who is in- 
dustrious and energetic can make his way in Florida, 
even if he has but little money, or none at all, though 
the results will be much slower in coming than in the 
West. On a new western farm, the next year after 
the land is broken, it will yield as valuable a crop, as 
in twenty years, and without a dollar's expenditure 
for clearing and fertilizing, which are such enormous 
items of expense in Florida. The immediate results 
are vastly in favor of the western settler, but the 
advantage of the orange grove over the wheat 
farm is in the fact that while for ten years it yields 
nothing but demands everything, after that it is a for- 
tune. Still, people must live during that ten years, 
and unless they have a little assured income, and a 
little will do, they are reasonably sure to have a suffi- 



75 
ciently hard experience to test the metal of which 
they are made in a tolerably thorough manner. 

A man who is not compelled to live in Florida for 
reasons of health should consider very carefully be- 
fore he sacrifices a good position or profitable busi- 
ness, in the north, to invest a small capital in orange 
growing or any other Florida interest. There are al- 
ways risks and chances in changing one's conditions 
and surroundings. Setting aside considerations of 
health, it is not everyone who can bear transplanting. 
They strike root so deeply in their native soil that 
they can thrive in no other. The conditions in which 
they have grrown up, social and material, their early 
habits and associations, are a part of their very life, 
and they cannot safely be torn from them. They may 
be removed to better conditions but they are not bet- 
ter for them, they cannot adapt themselves to the new 
surroundings, cannot strike root in the new soil, and 
remain aliens and strangers, pining for the old life, the 
old ways, the old associations. Perhaps after many 
years the place of exile becomes home, and a return 
to the early life would be a renewed pain, but all such 
natures, and there are many of them, should be spared 
if possible the wearing pain of the slow process 
through which only they can make a new home. 

They have none of the pliant adaptability of others 
who can readil}' adopt new ways, conform to new 



76 
conditions, fit into new places, and turn the current 
of their lives into entirely new channels, with a happy 
facility which is often extremely fortunate in this world 
of change and vicissitude. If persons who are lack- 
ing in this adaptability are compelled to make a new 
home by reasons of health or circumstances, it should 
be done bravely and cheerfully, but if not under such 
necessity, they should consider well before incurring 
so serious a risk as that of long continued discontent 
and homesickness. A safe rule to follow in this as 
well as in every important matter, is "let well enough 
alone." If people are doing fairly well in the north 
they had better stay there, rather than take the risks 
and chances that attend any serious change, and if 
possible, every one who thinks of making a perma- 
nent home in Florida should spend a few weeks or 
months here, before sacrificing other interests. 

Orange growing in addition to its opportunities as 
an exclusive occupation, for those who must make a 
living by it, if they engage in it at all, offers an inval- 
uable resource to men who are compelled to spend 
the winter in Florida on account of ill health, and 
who, though having money enough to be relieved 
from pecuniary necessities, have the habit of work so 
firmly established that a life void of active occupation 
is simply intolerable. One whose life has been spent 
in the strain and stress of business in the north, 



77 
whose every waking hour has been filled with absorb- 
ing, exciting interests, and whose brain and nerves 
have been under a heavy pressure of responsibility 
for years out of mind, can no more adapt himself to 
a quiet, purposeless life than a rushing river can sud- 
denly transform itself into a stagnant pool. The in- 
tense absorption of business men in their affairs does 
not always indicate a mere love of money, as many 
people think. It is either a long established habit, 
growing first out of necessity and the sharp competi- 
tion of modern business and becoming finally a sec- 
ond nature, or it is the necessity of a strong, active, 
practical mind for the exercise of its powers in its own 
congenial field. There are thousands of men who 
belong as naturally in the rush and whirl of business, 
as a fish does in its own watery element, and one is 
about as unhappy as the other, when taken into some 
other state of being. 

A more forlorn creature can hardly be imagined 
than an active business man suddenly compelled to 
rest. He makes harder work of it than other men 
do of toiling for their daily bread. He has lost the 
habit of reading, or soon tires of it, considers fishing 
an unmitigated bore, and social diversions still more 
so. He lounges about the hotel office, listless and 
forlorn, and only brightens up when a business friend 
arrives and tells him the latest news concerning the 



78 
rise and fall of stocks, or movements in real estate, 
shipping, or some other line of business. His wife 
finds the task of entertaining and amusing him beyond 
any ordinary feminine resources, and it is quite pa- 
thetic to see her relief when for an hour or two, her 
husband has found something to do. Now, for such 
men, (and their wives) an orange grove is an unal- 
loyed blessing. It furnishes an outlet for the rush- 
ing activity that cannot, with safety, be too suddenly 
checked, a fascinating out of door interest which has 
its commercial aspect, and permits the overtaxed 
brain to rest without wearing itself out in the effort. 
One man compelled to spend the winters here on 
account of ill health, said to me lately, "I would die 
in two weeks without that grove." He expended a 
small fortune in the purchase of a bearing grove, 
simply to have something to do during his winter's 
exile, but finds a keen business interest in making 
his investment "pay," studies the question of fertiliz- 
ing as if his daily bread depended upon it and ships 
his oranges with as careful calculations as to profits 
as if they constituted his entire source of income. If 
he lost the whole grove, he would not suffer, finan- 
cially, from it, yet it is worth to him more than any 
amount of money could measure, for he finds in it 
an interest which is in harmony with his mental hab- 
its, yet affords relief from the too intense strain of 



79 
his northern business. There are many women who 
can find in Florida the conditions which they need, 
especially, if they have or can cultivate a taste for 
out of door occupations. The climate is especially 
adapted to the nervous, over sensitive, hysterical 
women who abound in every circle of our overwrought 
American life. This class of invalids constitutes the 
Waterloo of medical science, for their ailments yield 
to no remedies, and their cure lies in conditions rath- 
er than treatment. In many cases rest is more im- 
portant to them than medicine, and in many others a 
healthful, unexciting interest is more necessary than 
either. Florida affords both of these essential con- 
ditions, a climate that soothes instead of stimulating 
the weak irritable nerves, affords a variety of fascinat- 
ing out of door interests, and avoids entirely the de- 
bilitating effect of furnace heat and confinement to 
the house during the winter which are as unfavorable 
to cases of nervous derangement as to consumption. 
A delicate woman, however, receives little benefit 
from her life here, unless she adds to the beneficial 
effect of the climate a healthful, active interest, thus 
enlisting all the mental and nervous forces in aid of 
the air and sunshine. There are many women who 
have pursued this sensible course with the greatest 
possible advantage and have found under these sun- 
ny skies, health, happiness and new zest and interest 



8o 
in life. Others fail to reap this benefit, from various 
causes. In some cases a colder climate would suit 
them better, and in others they have undertaken to 
do too much or have suffered from lack of means 
to provide necessary comforts. A woman needs to 
come here under favorable circumstances to be reas- 
onably sure of success in her pursuit of health, or 
of profit, though I know of more than one delicate 
woman who has made up in *' pluck" what she lacked 
in strength, and by force of will and the inspiration 
of hope and courage has overcome all obstacles. 
During the past year a young lady, not over twenty, 
pretty and refined, the daughter of a northern cler- 
gyman, has settled on a new place, with three youn- 
ger brothers, and started out to make an orange 
grove and a home. When the place begins to be 
profitable, her parents are to give up their northern 
interests to join their enterprising children. Whether 
this young girl has a remote idea of all the difficul- 
ties, obstacles and discouragements that lie in wait to 
test her untried strength, is extremely doubtful, but 
at any rate she is a brave girl and deserves all possi- 
ble success. I will not mention her name, nor even 
the county in which she is living, for fear of causing 
such an exodus of young men from the north, that 
this letter will be suppressed as an incendiary docu- 
ment. 



8i 

No. 10, 
Speaking of young men, when I see so many of 
them in cities wearing out their youthful hope and 
courage and strength, "looking for a situation," glad 
to take anything they can get to do, at any salary 
employers choose to give, college graduates working 
for six or eight dollars a week, big six foot fellows 
standing behind a counter selling ribbons, when I see 
every avenue of employment overcrowded and a hun- 
dred applicants for one position, and see the oppor- 
tunities here for active energetic young men, I think 
if I was one of that struggling class, unless I had 
some special means of propitiating the financial dei- 
ties of the city, I would shake its dust forever from 
my feet, bid farewell to counter or desk, groceries or 
dry goods, and "take up the shovel and the hoe" in 
Florida. To be sure, for those who do this, there is 
a sacrifice of many agreeable things, silk hats and 
"nobby" canes, occasional theatre or german, and 
other privileges which somehow or other young men 
seem to extract from eight dollars a week, but with 
what immeasurable gain in manliness and indepen- 
dence. I almost look to sec them grow two or three 
inches in height during the process of losing the city 
pallor of complexion and delicate whiteness of hands, 
which begins as soon as the Florida sun and air have 
a chance at their faces and they take hold of a plow 



82 
handle for the first time. Many of the disadvantages 
in the way of famihes do not apply to them. A young 
strong man, with no wife or children to provide for, 
need not fear that he cannot in some way earn his 
living;. There are but few who cannot bear the cli- 
mate, with reasonable care, and though if they have 
no money to start with they must encounter many 
hardships, what is a young man good for if he is 
afraid of roughing it a little for the sake of future in- 
dependence? 

In contrasting the nature of the interests here, 
their possibilities for the future, and their effect upon 
the character of those engaged in them, with the or- 
dinary positions occupied by young men in the cities, 
the comparison is in every way in favor of the former. 
In all large cities, there is such a supply of young 
men to fill clerkships and all subordinate positions of 
every kind, that not only are the salaries very low 
compared to the expense of living, but the oppor- 
tunities for advancement extremely limited. The 
boy of sixteen or eighteen who enters a mercantile 
house on a salary of a hundred dollars a year and 
the expectation of ending his career in it as senior 
partner of the firm, must be remarkably well suited 
to the business and also extremely fortunate, if his 
expectations are ever realized. The chances are all 
against him, and if he is a head salesman at fifty, 



83 
with a salary of two thousand dollars, he is doing as 
well as he really has a right to expect, unless he 
possesses unusual abilities. In banking, insurance 
and railway offices, the odds are still heavier against 
one who has no powerful friend among the stock- 
holders. "Once a bank clerk always a bank clerk," 
may be accepted as an axiom. And what is the life 
for which all other possibilities are sacrificed ? To 
sit on a high stool in a great office with more rich 
carving than pure air, working all day by gas light, 
perhaps counting piles of money, writing letters 
after a stated form, or adding up columns of figures 
till the man becomes a calculating machine. 

The work is all routine of a most limited kind, ex- 
ercising only certain mental faculties of lesser impor- 
tance, and affording no scope whatever for that growth 
of character and development of mental capacity that 
comes of action, of independent judgment, of re- 
sponsibility, and contact with men in different rela- 
tions. It is like binding a growing tree with tight 
ligatures and allowing only the smaller branches to 
grow, to cramp the growing powers of the mind by 
work that affords no stimulus to any but one or two 
limited faculties, leaving the others, the judgment, 
the will, the comprehension of principles, and com- 
binations, to languish and grow weak for want of 
healthy stimulus. Many a bright young fellow of 



84 
twenty, with eager, active mind, who enters upon 
mere routine work is no more of a man at thirty, 
only less vigorous in physique, paler and duller of 
countenance and mentally narrower and less vigor- 
ous. That there are those \yhose minds are so 
strong and active that they will grow in an exhausted 
receiver does not alter the general fact that routine 
work cramps and narrows the mental growth instead 
of stimulates it. In such an occupation as orange 
growing or any of the kindred interests of Florida, 
one of the advantages to the character of a young 
man is the independence and freedom of action, ab- 
sence of all artificial rules and regulations and com- 
plete self responsibility. He is his own master, there 
is no one to dictate at what hour he shall begin his 
day's w^ork, or how long time he shall spend in eat- 
ing his luncheon. If he makes mistakes, if he is 
careless and inattentive or indolent, he and he only 
suffers the consequences. If he is active and ener- 
getic, he knows that every stroke of good work will 
count for its full value in its results to himself, which 
is^very far from being the case always, in mercantile 
life as many a faithful, efficient clerk knows, whose 
services arc appreciated only to the extent of the 
smallest possible salary that will enable him to keep 
the breath in his body and a decent coat on his 
back. 



85 
At every stage of the Florida orange grower's or 
gardener's work, he must observe correctly, and 
form intelligent opinions as to methods and future 
developments, and in order to succeed, must exer- 
cise all the most valuable practical faculties of the 
mind, intelligence, forecast, prudence, attention to 
details, thoroughness and energy. He comes into 
relations with other men without artificial conditions 
and without grades of positions or authority, so that 
he counts simply for what he is worth, and if he is 
worthy of respect and consideration, seldom fails to 
receive it. I do not wish to depreciate a taste for, or 
ambition in, mercantile or other city interests. For 
those who are fitted for them and enter them under 
such conditions as permit of advancement, there are 
unlimited possibilities, and there are also many who 
have not the strength and grasp of mind to achieve 
great success, yet are adapted to smaller business in 
some of the myriad forms of trade, and would be 
entirely out of place in the conditions of Florida 
life. Then there are those whose tastes and talents 
are in the line of one of the professions, or of art, 
literature or music, and for such, of course, Florida 
offers little opportunity. But there are thousands of 
young men who are not specially fitted for any one 
pursuit, and have no decided taste or talent of any 
kind, but a general practical adaptability, which en- 



86 
ables them to make good salesmen or book keepers, 
yet equally good cattle drovers in Texas or orange 
growers in Florida. 

As teachers and parents very well know, the boys 
who have a decided talent or fitness for one thing, 
are in a very small minority, and the difficult ques- 
tion that confronts the parents of the majority of 
boys, and the youngsters themselves when they'come 
to manhood, is, what shall they do, whose abilities 
are of the ordinary, practical order, rather than the 
marked and exceptional. The obviously wise and 
sensible course is to give them such an occupation 
as does not require special talent, but the ordinary 
practical faculties in which young America is not 
likely to be seriously deficient, and which will devel- 
op harmoniously and fully all the possibilities of the 
mind, instead of cramping and crippling them. This 
is afforded in Florida, and in addition, results which 
can seldom be atUiiiicd anywhere else by the same 
abilities or effort. 

Of course all do not succeed here. A young man 
must not be afraid of work, for one thing. Florida 
has no use for dainty fingered Apollos, nor "super 
aesthetical, ultra poetical, out of the way young 
men," but a practical, intelligent, energetic young 
man can hardly fail to succeed in a financial sense, 
and to occupy a position of honorable independence 



87 

in a very few years. As an instance of what can be 
accomplished by phick and determination, I will give 
one illustration. A young man came to P^lorida in 
very ill health and without money or friends. By the 
kindness of, I think, General Sanford, he obtained a 
clerkship by which he could support himself, and by 
the advice of his employer, spent his leisure time in 
cultivating an orange grove. In six years he sold 
his place for six thousand dollars, which he immedi- 
ately reinvested in more land and more trees. As he 
had recovered his health during this time, he natur- 
ally considered the six years rather profitably spent. 
This is not a remarkable instance, but shows what 
can be done by energy and industry. 

If a young man has a little money to start with he 
has an immense advantage, and is enabled to avoid 
the worst hardships and discouragements of pioneer- 
ing, and if he can bring his grove to the profitable 
age without having at the same time to earn his liv- 
ing, he may consider himself favored of the gods. If, 
however, he has good health, and a plentiful supply 
of aggressive energy, there are no difficulties which 
he cannot overcome, with very little or no money at 
all. This class, young men, can come to Florida with 
less risk of disappointment as to practical results and 
general satisfaction than any other, but even they 
should not expect to find an easy or always pleasant 



88 
life, but be prepared to meet and overcome many ob- 
stacles in the road to fortune. Ease and pleasure, 
however, are not essential conditions for a young man 
with "the right stuff in him," and here he can be sure 
of a healthful, honorable occupation, which if pur- 
sued in the right manner, will yield him a competence 
in the future, and which from the very first, has many 
advantages. One young man I know, who tried the 
wholesale grocery business, and broke down in health 
before the first year was finished, now strong and vig- 
orous as he never hoped to be, said to me lately, with 
a sparkle in his eyes, and a flush on his sun-browned 
cheek, "Why, I wouldn't take the best position in 
any Boston store," and he expressed the genuine spirit 
of young America when he said, "I am up at five 
o'clock every morning, but I would rather get up at 
five voluntarily than to be obliged to do it at six in 
order to get down to the store at seven." 

In recapitulation, I would say, let all who think of 
making a home in Florida consider the matter well, 
with regard to theij own individual peculiarities of 
circumstances, health, family affairs, tastes and re- 
quirements, and not be guided in their decision by the 
experience of others, without taking into account all 
differences in circumstances, characteristics, and pre- 
vious manner of living. As it is difficult to judge by 
another person's experience, so it is difficult to give 



89 

advice based upon ones own, and one needs to be 
\ery cautious in advising any one to a certain course, 
when for him it might lead to very different results 
than those upon which the advice was based. Thou- 
sands of people have happy and prosperous homes 
in Florida who would have died from the cold of the 
north, or struggled along in poverty and disappoint- 
ment. Thousands of others have left the state dis- 
heartened and disgusted. The causes of this unfor- 
tunate result vary in different cases. In some, the 
persons were only suited to a colder climate and could 
not thrive in that of Florida. In others, their failure 
was from the want of those qualities which are es- 
sential to success anywhere, — energy, thrift, perse- 
verance and intelligence. They could not do success- 
fully anything more difficult than cutting coupons off 
U. S. bonds! Others were not adapted to the life 
here, and failed not from their own fault, or anything 
wTong in anything, but simply because they were in 
the wrong place, "square men in round holes," and 
could not fit into them. No one should come here 
who does not thrive in a warm climate, who depends 
much upon society or excitement, who lacks practi- 
cal judgment and efficiency, who is afraid of work, 
and cannot adapt himself to new and crude condi- 
tions, or who expects to find F^lorida a terrestrial par- 
adise. All others can come with a fair prospect of 



90 

being at least as happy as they could be anywhere on 
this planet, which at the best is decidedly lacking in 
several requisites for perfect felicity. 



No. II. 
Socially and politically, Florida is in a state of tran- 
sition, and it is difficult to predict what will be the 
result of the fusion of so many elements when time 
has converted them into a homogeneous population. 
One class, of course, the negroes, will be always dis- 
tinct in race, and separated socially from the whites, 
but their political equality and educational opportun- 
ities will have their natural effect in a generation or 
two and render the line of division less sharp, 
and, if the race develops as some believe it is capa- 
ble of doing, the difference in intelligence and habits 
less great than at present. The Florida negroes, like 
those of all the extreme southern states, are probably 
less intelligent and ambitious than those of the more 
northern states of Virginia, and that latitude. They 
have the usual faults of their race, indolence, improv- 
idence, absence of any binding sense of obligation in 
any agreement, or to the tie of. marriage, and the 
habit of subservience to authority inherited from gen- 
erations of slaves, renders them often like children in 
the absence of parental control, and the task of get- 



91 
ting them to do efficient, faithful work by no means 
an easy one. VVe cannot, however, judge them by 
any standard of our own, but must consider the short 
period that has elapsed since they became self re- 
sponsible beings, the generations passed in slavery, 
and still more, the night of barbarism out of which 
they came into the twilight of servitude. 

It is only in this generation that the race has stood 
in this country in the full light of freedom and self 
reliance, and to expect it to exhibit anything like 
comparative equality with even the lower orders of 
whites, would imply a greater confidence in its inher- 
ent capabilities than could be justified by any intelli- 
gent estimate of the causes that have made the ne- 
groes what they are. Taking into account their past 
condition, both in slavery and in their native country, 
and considering how little progress ajiy class of peo- 
ple can make in one generation, the prospects of the 
negroes, for the future, may be regarded as very hope- 
ful. As much has been accomplished as could pos- 
sibly be expected in so short a time, when we con- 
sider in what condition they were invested with the 
privileges and responsibilities of freemen. Helpless 
as children as far as independent action was concern- 
ed, utterly ignorant, the cause and occasion of a ter- 
rible, fratricidal war, and of bitter contention long 
after its close, the only wonder is that they were not 



92 

crushed out of existence "between the upper and 
the nether millstone," and the most that could rea- 
sonably be expected for the first decade, at least, was 
that they should keep alive. The actual result has 
been that they have continued to do their usual work 
in their usual fashion, with the disadvantage, to them- 
selves and their employers, of the loss of needed au- 
thority but the advantage that without it they have 
been slowly developing the ability to stand alone with- 
out guidance, at least they have made a beginning in 
that direction, and that is the most that could be ex- 
pected. 

The generation that has grown up since the war 
shows a decided advance in intelligence and energy, 
and the necessity of caring for themselves, and the 
knowledge that no one else will provide for them, is 
having its usual stimulating effect. Two most en- 
coura^iing indications are, their desire to own land, 
and their almost universal anxiety that their children 
should be educated. There is something pathetic in 
the eagerness of men and women who do not know 
one letter from another, to give their children the ac- 
quirements, which seem to them as attributes of the 
higher civilization to which they have been sub- 
ject, and are still inferior. Those of the young ne- 
gro men who have acquired some school education, 
are apt to take upon themselves many airs of superi- 



93 
ority over their less fortun:itc ciders, who sometimes 
resent and sometimes meekly submit to their arro- 
gance. But their hunger for school knowledge is 
the most hopeful indication possible of the future of 
the race in this country, and even if its leading mo- 
tive is the desire to lessen the distance between them- 
selves and the whites, it does not matter, 'as long as 
it stimulates them to exertion. Politically, they are 
usually, though not always, republicans, and as far 
as I know have been allowed to vote as they pleased 
without intimidation or violence, though, of course, 
sometimes under pressure of strong motives of per- 
sonal interests and inducements of one kind and an- 
other, as is sure to be the case with any class of very 
ignorant voters. They are treated reasonably well, 
as a general thing, by northern and southern people. 
The former, of course, are more willing to grant 
them legal and polical rights, but the latter have the 
habit of early association, which tends to more 
kindly relations, so that the difference is less than 
might be expected. 

The reluctance of the southern people to seeing 
their former slaves enjoying equal rights with them- 
selves, is not unnatural, and i- shared by almost all 
northern people who have. lived long in the south. 
Time and custom alone will overcome it. Their un- 
willingness to see them educated, however, and their 



94 
prejudice against those who undertake the trying and 
difficult task of instructing them is utterly senseless 
and unreasonable. The negroes are here, they are a 
fact in the social and political system of the country, 
and they are politicall}^ and legally on an equality 
with the whites. It remains with the dominant race 
to decide whether they shall be converted, as fast as 
possible, into a class of intelligent citizens whose 
votes and whose actions shall promote the well being 
of the whole community, or whether they shall re- 
main that always dangerous element, an ignorant 
class, powerful through their right of suffrage, but by 
their ignorance liable to be made the tools of dema- 
gogues to the danger, and possibly under some cir- 
cumstances the ruin of the state. I believe the 
southern people are gradually coming to realize the 
necessity of educating the colored people, and if not 
actively encouraging it, are at least, no longer ren- 
dering it difficult or impossible by their opposition. 
The white residents of Florida consist of three 
classes, the original "cracker" population, the north- 
ern people who have settled in the state since the 
close of the war, and the better class of southern 
people. The first are the "poor white" class of the 
south, more distinct from the better class than is the 
case in the north, as there the different grades of so- 
ciety "shade" into each other by more gradual grada- 



95 
tions. The "crackers" as they are called, are a thrift- 
less, unenterprising people, with some very creditable 
exceptions of course, but are quiet, and now at least, 
law-abiding, making no trouble, and likely to be ab- 
sorbed into the new population of the state without 
acting as a hostile element. 

In the old days, when law in Florida was little 
more than a very shadowy name, and the "Regula- 
tors" held full sway, there were men of natural force 
and vigor of character who by virtue of their supe- 
rior strength and courage, ruled as kings and chiefs 
over their associates. Their authority was recog- 
nized, and they dispensed a sort of rough justice on 
occasions which caused them to be regarded with a 
wholesome awe and respect. Even these lawless 
leaders, however, when northern people intruded up- 
on their cattle ranges, though they gave them at first 
anything but a cordial welcome, made them no real 
trouble, and soon acquiesced more or less cheerfully, 
in the new order of things. The northern people in 
Florida, are of a high average of character, intelli- 
gence and financial resources, respectable mechanics, 
substantial farmers, and a great many people of 
means and leisure from the north, form a very valua- 
ble contribution towards the future population of 
Florida. Their relations with the corresponding 
class of southern peoplp, arc for the most part reas- 



96 
onably harmonious and pleasant. It is absurd that 
they should be otherwise, or that people should as- 
sume as they do sometimes, that there is any inher- 
ent difference between northern and southern people 
of the same social grade. They are the same peo- 
ple, in every sense, and in all general characteristics, 
except such superficial variations as result from dif- 
ferent conditions of living, and former ownership of 
the laboring class. Northern people soon become 
southern in ways and habits, after becoming residents 
of the south, and southern people after a few years' 
residence in the north are veritable "yankees" in all 
essential things. Still, the bitter feeling engendered 
by the war, as well as the slavery agitation previous 
to it, has built up an artificial wall of distinction be- 
tween northern and southern people, so that they are 
constantly spoken of as two separate and distinct 
classes. Although this distinction is rapidly dying 
away, and in ano'.li':r generation will be only as a 
phantom of the pa.,t, we have not yet arrived at the 
point of not longer recognizing it at all. The north- 
ern people coming here had almost invariably, none 
but kindly feelings towards their future neighbors, 
who in some cases reciprocated them, and in some 
others did not. One "unreconstructed" man has 
been in the habit of saying that he "had at least one 
legacy to leave his children, .undying hatred to the 



97 
north," and some others have manifested their dislike 
for "the yanks" by cheating and over-reaching tliem 
in every possible way, in some cases returning the 
utmost liberality and generous dealing, by conduct, to 
sa}- the least of it, quite the reverse, claiming always 
to be the very soul of honor, only justified in taking 

advantage of "a yankee." Still, it is to be 

taken into account, always, that there are men who 
need only a flimsy excuse of any kind, for their 
meanness, and except during the excitement of a po- 
litical campaign, I have found that a southerner who 
will act in a dishonorable or ungentlemanly manner 
towards a northern man, needs only an excuse of 
some sort, to exhibit the same disposition with a na- 
tive Ploridian or Alabamian. It is always pleasanter 
to regard the better aspects of human nature, and in 
these relations of northern and southern people, there 
is much that reflects great credit upon the latter as 
well as the former. In one instance, I gi\'e it as a 
contrast to those mentioned above, a southern lawyer 
had a yankee client, a man upon whom unfortunate 
circumstances had cast a cloud of distrust as to his 
financial integrity and honorable intentions. Kvery 
thing looked unfavorable, not only as regards his 
character, but the. possibility of Iiis clearing himself 
from the net-work of difficult) in which he was in- 
\ olved. Those opposed to hiin were mostl)' southern 



men, who sneered at his lawyer for representing "that 
yankee." He did so, however, faithfully, zealously 
and persistently, going often beyond his professional 
duty, for he believed in the honest intentions, and 
sympathized with the struggles of his client. After a 
while, the difficulties were overcome, the obligations 
met, and the client. cleared of the cloud upon his 
name, and none rejoiced with him more heartily than 
his faithful friend and legal adviser, the southern law- 
yer, who at the same time was a man of extreme 
"southern" sentiments and bitterly opposed to the 
new order of things, while his client was a republi- 
can, though not a politician. Such instances show 
that "blood is thicker than water," and that north and 
south are really brothers. 

All who care for the well being of either must 
hope that all remaining traces of bitterness and re- 
sentment will soon entirely pass away, leaving only 
the true fraternal sentiment of good will. There are 
very few southern men, however opposed they may 
be to equal political rights for the negroes, who 
would have them again as slaves, not only because 
they find the new system, on the whole, works better, 
or will do so, when the new machinery runs smoothly, 
but from conscientious reasons. I have been sur- 
prised, in some cases, by the cheerful acquiescence 
in the new order, where the destruction of the old 



99 
had involved fortune, ease, luxury, and all the privi- 
leges of wealth and leisure. One man, a South Caro- 
linian, who had lost everything by the war and had 
been reduced to poverty and the necessity of begin- 
ning life again under circumstances of great difficul- 
ty, who had seen his delicately reared daughter sub- 
jected to all the toil and hardships of pioneer life, 
said to me, after recounting all his cruel losses, "And 
yet I do not complain of even this terrible price to be 
rid of slavery, and if I could have back all that I lost, 
I would not take it, if with it I must have on my 
conscience the ownership of human beings as I re- 
gard it now." I felt that I could bow my head in 
reverence before a man who could accept such losses 
as he had suffered, in such a spirit as that. 

And I cannot close this letter without a tribute to 
the southern women I have known, who have ac- 
cepted without a murmur the changed conditions of 
their lives, and taken up bravely and cheerfully the 
heaviest burdens of poverty and drudgery, ladies 
whose hands had never touched any kind of heavy 
labor, learning the coarsest household tasks and per- 
forming them without complaint, adapting themselves 
to their new lives so successfully that while still the 
refined and cultivated ladies they were reared to be, 
they dignified and elevated their new tasks and new 
surroundings by the spirit in which they accepted 



lOO 
them. It has often been said that the southern 
women would never be "reconstructed." By this is 
meant that they still resent bitterly the "subjugation" 
as some call it, of the south, and that they encourage 
their husbands and teach their sons to keep alive the 
old bitter hatred of the north. I believe Jefferson 
Davis boasted of this unconquerable spirit in his 
country women. While no doubt there is founda- 
tion for this in a great many cases, I have not found 
it so general as to justify its being regarded as a 
universal fact. On the contrary I have found in 
many southern women a clear sighted appreciation 
of the real questions involved in the present relations 
of the north and south, and such superiority to per- 
sonal considerations, losses and changes, that I have 
felt that the southern women have been slandered by 
their own friends. 

One instance will always remain in my memory as 
an illustration, not only of the most cruel conse- 
quences of the civil war, but of the most beautiful 
and noble womanly character. At the time of the war 
there lived in Alabama a very young widow lady, 
with two little boys. She was very beautiful in per- 
son, refined and fastidious in habits, and very delicate 
in health. She had been reared in luxury, had never 
even waited upon herself, and had been cared for as 
tenderly as an exotic plant. The close of the war 



101 
left her utterly destitute as her fortune consisted en- 
tirely of negroes. One more helpless to make her 
way and provide for herself and her children could 
not be imagined, and in her utter helplessness she ac- 
cepted an invitation from an uncle who had settled in 
Florida to make her home with him. She did so, 
and with her little boys, went into the wilderness to 
live. Her uncle, with a younger man, a distant rela- 
tive, had also been impoverished by the war, and 
were trying to make a home and an orange grove in 
Florida without money or the early habits of hard 
work, which would have made the task much easier 
to some men. So the home which was the only 
refuge for the poor little delicate lady, was of the 
rudest, roughest kind, absolutely without the present 
possibility of comfortable living, and without assist- 
ance in even the roughest work. She went to work 
bravely, however. After a time she became the wife of 
the younger man, who did all in his power, but alas ! 
that was very little, to soften the privations and labor, 
so cruelly hard to one as delicate in every way as she 
was. One year after another passed. Two children 
were born and died. There was no society, no medi- 
cal attendance or nursing when ill, no servants to do 
the work, even when the poor mistress of the house 
was in her bed, utterly prostrate. No proper food, 
no comforts, nothing but hard work when she could 



I02 

Stand on her feet, and such help as her husband and 
children could give her. Her delicate beauty faded 
in the hard, rough life, and the limited strength so 
fearfully overtaxed gave way, but not the brave spirit 
or the steadfast hope. A better life would come, the 
wilderness would be peopled, there would be society 
and schools for the boys, and old comforts, possibly a 
little of the old luxuries, necessities to her, would 
come, when the orange grove began to be profitable, 
and the land became valuable -as it surely would. She 
saw it all in her visions of the future, visions that 
were realized, for it all came. The wilderness is peo- 
pled now, there are society and churches and schools 
and all the comforts of civilized life. It all came — 
but it came too late ! It came when she was fading 
away, and after waiting in the wilderness so long, the 
realization of the hope that had sustained her during 
all those weary yeais came to her as she was dying. 
It was in the last two years of her beautiful, sad life, 
that I knew her, and while I grieved over the wreck 
of so much that was so beautiful and lovely, she said 
to me more than once, "But I would bear it all over 
again rather than be the owner of slaves again." Her 
memory is like a saintly presence still in one lovely 
spot in Florida, and though she passed away before 
the realization of any of her hopes, it surely cannot 
be in vain that such a woman lived and died. The 



103 
world is better because for a few years it was her 
home, and the influence of such a woman does not 
soon pass away, even when her bodily presence is for- 
ever lost. In the clouds of bitterness and hate that 
have obscured the light of brotherhood in the south, 
such a spirit is a star of hope, and the class of women 
that can produce one such perfect flower of loveliness 
and nobility, even if there is not another among ten 
thousand, cannot be dominated by the narrow preju- 
dices and stubborn hate that have been attributed to 
the southern women. 



No. 12. 
The Alligator is the typical Floridian, and general- 
ly regarded as the representative of the aristocracy 
of the state. In fact, if either he or the human 
native fails to receive a proper degree of respect, it 
is not the Alligator, the king of the lakes and rivers 
and patriarch of the swamps. In personal appear- 
ance he is not strictly beautiful, his features being 
somewhat irregular, and his complexion not as deli- 
cate as it might be, but he has a fine open counte- 
nance and a "sincere" expression. You know what 
he means when he opens his mouth. He belongs to 
a very old and aristocratic family, and is nearest of 
kin to the sacred crocodile of Egypt, so he naturally 



I04 
keeps himself somewhat aloof from the democratic 
society of the woods, evidently not considering 'pos- 
sums, 'coons and wild cats suitable associates for him. 
But in spite of his family dignity, he is sufficiently 
in harmony with the spirit of modern America, to 
act as a sort of silent partner in several branches of 
trade and manufacture. He is largely interested in 
the jewelry business, and manufactures a style of 
brooches, ear drops, &c., which has not been success- 
fully imitated and on which he has a patent. Then 
his stamped leather for traveling bags and pocket 
books is so original in design and so superior in qual- 
ity that nothing approaches it in marketable value. 
For a native Floridian, as he is, to engage in com- 
mercial pursuits, so successfully as to distance all 
competitors in his line of business, indicates such 
comprehensive practical intelligence as to at once 
disprove the conceited theory of the yankees that 
they embody the highest order of commercial spirit. 
Then the habits of the Alligator show his super- 
iority over all northern beasts, and in some respects 
over man himself. With a wise judgment never to 
be sufficiently admired, he lives in the water for cool- 
ness and comfort during the hot Florida summers, 
but avails himself, also, of all the resources of the 
land. When he requires a change of air for his 
health, all he has to do is to crawl out upon a log 



105 
and take a sun-bath. He has another motive for ly- 
\ng on a log, which shows that when it comes to get- 
ting a hving, the smartest yankee that ever manufac- 
tured wooden nutmegs is an aboriginal savage in stu- 
pidity, compared to the Alligator. At a little distance 
he is likely to be mistaken for the log itself, and there 
is always a chance of his dinner coming to him, with- 
out his exerting himself to go to market for it. A 
hog or a small negro child may stray conveniently 
near, and all he has to do is to throw his tail around 
bringing the desired object within range of his capa- 
cious jaws which, open to their widest extent, will be 
sure to catch it, even if the aim is not very straight. 
This without a movement of his bo.dy, and the wis- 
dom of this proceeding will be appreciated by all 
who have experienced the disinclination for exertion 
which is the prevailing state of mind and body dur- 
ing the Florida summer. 

Now, where is the man who can accomplish sq 
much with so little expenditure of strength? His 
dinner provided, the Alligator merely closes his eyes 
and finishes his interrupted nap. It was probably after 
a satisfactory meal of this kind that one was lying on 
the bank of the lake, when two young men came 
ashore from a row boat at that particular spot. One 
of them, looking for a good place to land without 
wetting his feet, saw as he supposed, a convenient 



io6 

log lying upon the bank close by the water, and 
sprang out upon it. When the 'gator found himself 
thus used as a substitute for a dead log, and felt a hun- 
dred and eighty pound young man suddenly come 
down upon his back, he was naturally indignant at 
the liberty taken with him. He limbered up his tail 
and opened his jaws to receive a fresh consignment 
of supplies, but the young man, with a celerity of 
movement probably never equalled, before or since, 
in his experience, had by that time reached another 
spot at least twenty feet away from his improvised land- 
ing place, and after that, whenever he had occasion 
to make use of a log on the bank, for convenience in 
landing, he was always careful to ascertain if it was 
"hollow" in a sense that threatened uncomfortable 
consequences to any one who ventured too near. I 
was one time in a boat going to make a visit down 
the lake, rowing placidly along, at least another per- 
son was rowing for me. I always find that to use a 
different set of muscles from my own promotes that 
calm and cool condition so des'.rable to maintain in 
this climate, and sitting in the stern of the boat, saw 
a log floating on the surface of the water, motionless, 
the waves rippling against it, and moving languidly 
with the slow current, **Row nearer that log," I said 
to my companion, with no particular reason. It is 
often less trouble to do things without a reason, in a 



warm climate, than to exert oneself for a motive. So 
the boat was headed for the log, and we were soon 
almost near enough to touch it with an oar, when 
looking around, my companion exclaimed, suddenly, 
"Why ! that's a 'gator." And sure enough, the log, 
I could have taken oath it was a log, was changed in 
the twinkling of an eye into an enormous Alligator. 
The creature raised his head a little, winked know- 
ingly, smiled his characteristic genial smile and sank 
out of sight, evidently shaking with amphibious 
laughter at the joke he had perpetrated. As there 
was no opportunity to shake hands with him, I could 
not assure him of my hearty appreciation of his 
humor, but my companion was disgusted to think 
that he had lost, by having no rifle with him, a fine 
opportunity to secure the samples of jewelry and 
stamped leather which with a 'gator of his size were 
sure to be valuable. 

At the time of my early residence on the banks of 
Lake Crescent, there was a patriarchal Alligator who 
exercised supreme sway over his native waters, and 
was regarded with profound respects in his watery 
realm. He was of an unknown age, probably was 
gray headed when the Spaniards first came to Florida, 
at least was the oldest inhabitant of the region here- 
about, an authority on the weather, and doubtless 
also on the subject of orange grove fertilizing and the 



io8 
scale insect, only I don't think any one ever inter- 
viewed him on those important matters. He was at 
least twenty feet long, his leather hide had become 
corrugated iron, and was indented here and there by 
bullet marks, evidences of the futile attempts made to 
capture his extensive stock of jewelry and stamped 
leather, and his jaws when fully open, would have 
admitted a cart, mule and negro, especially the mule 
and negro, with perfect ease. Since the earliest settle- 
ment of the region about the lake, it had been the 
ambition of every man and boy to exhibit his teeth 
as trophies of valor, but the saurian monarch had 
not lived and ruled so many years in that lake with- 
out "cutting his eye teeth," and being of a humorous 
turn of mind, was in the habit of allowing his enemies 
to waste their ammunition on him to their hearts con- 
tent, showing his great body on a log, or on the sur- 
face of the water, at frequent intervals, merely to 
tantalize his persecutors. It was probably he that I 
saw, pretending to be a log. His mud palace was 
not far up the lake, and I was often entertained early 
in the morning by the music with which he beguiled 
his solitary state. Possibly it might have been a 
cradle song to sooth the slumbers of his numerous 
offspring. Not understanding Alligator music scien- 
tifically, I was not able to judge very accurately, but, 
whatever sentiment it was intended to express, war 



I09 
or love, parental affection or blighted hopes, it did it 
in a manner that left nothing to be desired, and was 
beyond criticism. The depth and volume of tone 
was sufficient to make the most "thunderous" bass 
of an opera company die of envy. It used to come 
rolling over the lake in the hot flower scented still- 
ness of the summer mornings, a sound that was some- 
what like the bellow of a very bad tempered bull, and 
a little like the roar of a lion when stirred up with a 
long pole in a menagerie, and altogether was so sug- 
gestive of the size of the throat from which it pro- 
ceeded, that always after hearing it I was particular- 
ly emphatic in warning my six year old boy to keep 
away from the lake bank, he being of a size which I 
judged would be regarded by an Alligator king as 
especially suited to his requirements for dinner. 

We had a two years old 'gator, not as a pet exactly, 
but to watch the creature's habits. They grow so 
slowly that at two years, they are only about two feet 
long, but the strength of that infant was something 
decidedly suggestive of melancholy reflections, when 
we multiplied it by ten, the proportion to a full grown 
'gator's size. He would bite a small stick in two as 
if his teeth had been knives, and made a peculiar hiss- 
ing noise, when teased, which we interpreted as a 
promise in vigorous Alligator language, of what we 
might expect when he grew up. However, they are 



I lO 

not at all dangerous if let alone, and any self respect- 
ing creature will resent infringements of its personal 
rights. 

There are not as many snakes in Florida as one 
might imagine, and very few venomous ones, not more 
than in many places in New England. The moccasin 
and rattlesnake are found occasionally, and two or 
three varieties of large and formidable looking but 
really harmless snakes. Even these are disappear- 
ins" as the river and lake banks are cleared, where 
they have their nests. While living here, I thought 
it would promote the health of the place to clear 
away the dense thicket on the bank, so close and 
tangled that a dog could not penetrate it. It was 
cut away and burned over, and the excitement in the 
snake population thus disturbed in their heretofore 
undisputed domicile, was something decidedly in- 
teresting to those on the ground. I need hardly say 
that I remained secluded in the house, but the num- 
ber of snakes cremated on that occasion perceptibly 
reduced the reptile population of Florida. When 
the land is well cleared, even along the water, and on 
high ground, one very seldom sees a snake of any 
kind. 

There is a great variety of game in the swamps 
and forests that still cover a large porton of the state, 
and from deer to 'possums, the sportsman has great 



1 1 1 
attractions to select from. Deer hunting, is of course, 
considered the royal sport. 'Coons and 'possums 
are interesting creatures to hunt, wild turkeys are 
not to be despised, and the wildcat, though not 
tempting to epicures, seems to afford great satisfac- 
tion to any young Nimrod who secures one of the 
viciosu, uncivilized felines. Now and then, from the 
thick forest near our house, we used to hear in the 
night, a strange wild cry, as of a human being in 
some terrible stress of danger. It had a piercing, de- 
spairing tone, as if inspired by mortal agony of terror, 
and more than once I sprang from my bed and went 
out on the v^eranda and listened, in terrified suspense, 
trying to locate it by the sound, that search might be 
made for the lost wanderer. It came perhaps, again 
and again, and as we listened, the human tone was 
lost, and we knew that it was some beast prowling in 
the thick shadows of the midnight forest. I was 
told that it was the cry of the panther, and as one 
was killed a few miles from Palatka, a formidable 
looking beast, that one would run up the tallest and 
slimmest pine tree to get away from, that wild mourn- 
ful cry may very likely have been the voice of the 
savage creature. 

As our country has been so generally cleared 
of all wild animals, the woods of Florida, teeming 
with savage life, and strange, beautiful birds, have a 



I 12 

fascination not found in the wildest mountain forests 
in New Hampshire. Here is still the "forest prim- 
eval" wild and lonely, and scarcely yet disturbed by 
the foot of man. Soon the solitude will be destroy- 
ed, and the reign of nature and her wild animal life 
broken forever, for even now the deer and the panther 
have deserted the woods of which I write, and in the 
remoter depths where they still roam undisturbed, 
the crack of the rifle will soon break the solemn 
stillness, and the smoke of the hunter's camp fire will 
dim the blue of the sky. But still for a little time 
will be streams on which no boat has yet sailed, and 
woods in which man has as yet made no paths Still 
for a little while the deer will have a home in the 
deep forest glades and the brilliant plumage of won- 
derful birds will burn like a flame in the shadows. 
Still for a little longer the remoter forests of Florida 
will link the wild forces of nature, in their primitive 
freedom, to the cultivated ease and safety of our 
modern life, but not very long, for they stand in the 
way of the current of civilization that sets so strongly 
now towards even the everglades, and the forests of 
Florida, as those of older New England are doomed. 



113 
No. 13. 

It is the first of March. I am sitting on the veranda, 
for who, unless compelled to do it, would waste these 
golden hours in the house. The sweet perfume of 
the yellow jessamine is in the air, the brilliant blos- 
soms of the begonia vine hang in gay profusion from 
the lattice work at my side, and the crimson buds 
are just bursting into bloom on a great oleander that 
stands by the gate. There are roses whose glowing 
hearts have absorbed the sunshine of this cloudless 
sky, there are stiff Spanish bayonets with sharp 
spikes guarding closely the secret of their wonderful 
white flowers for the later summer, and the aloe, for 
whose one perfect blossom a hundred winters and a 
hundred summers must contribute their rain and sun- 
shine. My eyes wander from the garden to the trees 
beyond, with their foliage of every tint of green, from 
the delicate fresh shade fit for the robe of a young 
princess, to the dark and sombre color that seems to 
cast a black shadow on the ground. 

There is the orange tree with its dark, rich, shining 
leaves, the stately and beautiful magnolia and cy- 
press, and the king of all the forest trees, the live oak, 
with its magnificent height, symmetrical form, and 
glistening foliage, each in its way incomparabl}' 
beautiful, and with their vivid tints softened b>' the 
weird grey moss hanging in wreaths and festoons 



114 
from their branches. Beyond the orange grove, and 
the hne of stately trees that grow upon its bank, 
hes the broad shining lake, and over it comes steal- 
ing a gental breeze, softly, as if it feared to break the 
spell of this heavenly calm. I have a book in my 
hand but I cannot read. 

My eyes wander from its pages to the flowers and 
the trees and the water that glistens in the sunlight 
like a floor trodden only by the light feet of fairies. 
There is a mellow golden haze in the atmosphere, a 
dreamy softness, that stills the throbbing pulses and 
and calms the unrest that comes of the fierce activities 
of our northern life. It weaves about the senses its 
spell of peace, it hushes the tumults of hopes and 
fears, and griefs and anxieties in the heart, it softens 
to a faint echo the cr}' of the hounds that follow 
upon our track, and in their Protean forms of neces- 
sity, and duty, and ambition, drive us from one en- 
deavor to another. It seems to brood over us with a 
heavenly pity, as if nature longed to draw to her lov- 
ing bosom her tired children and sooth their weai- 
ness and pain by her gentle ministrations. Not in 
Florida the stern discipline of ice and snow and cut- 
ting winds, under which in other lands, men grow 
strong and resolute to dare and to endure. Only 
here the loving brooding tenderness, as if the heart 
of nature yearned over the ills and sorrows of human- 



115 
ity and would fain breathe over them the magic of 
her peace. 

It is a land of rest and calm, a land not for the 
young and restless spirits who long for the conflicts 
of the world and its whirlpools of dizzy life, but for 
those who are weary and w^orn with the ceaseless 
struggle, or whose strength has failed them in the 
race, for those who shrink before the blasts of the 
northern winter, or who lie awake through all the 
weary hours of the night, thinking and planning with 
exhausted, unresting brain. For these, Florida is a 
blessed haven of peace and rest. 

In its dreamy atmosphere the sleep of long for- 
gotten childhood comes back, as if summoned by 
the tender care of loving Mother Nature, grief and 
pain and disapointment grow less acute, and one can 
sit for hours in the calm stillness and heavenly sun- 
shine, and forget there is anything in the world less 
lovely than flowers and waving moss wreaths, golden 
sunlight and shining water. We know, alas ! that 
there is, that the trail of the serpent is in every para- 
dise, that wherever man exists, there dwells also 
every passion and every vice of poor imperfect hu- 
manity, that on all earth is no garden so fair that its 
sunshine cannot be darkened for those who dwell 
therein, by the wrongs of others or their own want 
of harmony with the spirit of their surroundings. 



ii6 
We know all this, and we know that here, as else- 
where, hfe is full of discordant notes, but the sweet 
peace of nature is over all, and the spell of her heav- 
enly calm can soothe us to forgetfulness of pain and 
strife This is the fascination of Florida to the worn, 
overwrought workers of our modern life. They find 
here a place of rest, not of effort, an oriental calm in 
the midst of our rushing life. It is a land of 
dreams, not of intense intellectual activity. It will 
never give to the world new thoughts or discoveries, 
nor inaugurate new movements of reform. The phil- 
osophical mind that ponders upon the mighty prob- 
lems of life, that peers into the dusky shadows of 
the past in its search for the origin of man, and seeks 
to pierce the veil that hides the future that it may 
learn of his ultimate destiny, that stands before the 
sphinx of human life and demands of it the solution 
of the eternal mysteries, forgets its searching and its 
questions in this lotus land. The scientist to whose 
inquisitive mind every wonderful form of matter, the 
rocks and the rivers, the land and the sea, light and 
heat and motion, even the sensations of his own body, 
and the thoughts of his own busy brain, are prob- 
lems for whose solution he will wake while others 
sleep, will forget his experiments and his studies and 
the problems that have baffled him, and rest content, 
with the joy of living and the loveliness of nature. Here 



117 

rs not the sharp electrical air of New England that 
stimulates even dull and heavy minds, and develops 
and quickens every germ of thought. Philosophy 
and science, study, progress, reform have there their 
native home, but in this dreamy atmosphere their 
profound research, their tireless questioning, their ag- 
gressive force, are softened to a contented calm. 

Florida will never stand in the front rank of any 
department of intellectual activity. It will only for 
all time, welcome to its glowing sunshine, its shining 
waters, its cool deep forest shades, the wearied toilers 
who have found the problems of life beyond their so- 
lution, its evils beyond their power to relieve, its bur- 
dens beyond their strength to bear. Here they can 
rest for another day of conflict, for renewed toil and 
research, and blessed forever be this haven of peace 
in our land and generation of fierce activities. If Flor- 
ida ever develops a distinctive intellectual type, it 
will be that of dreamy, poetic imagination, and if 
ever one of its children embodies the spirit of its 
characteristics, it will be a poet, whose song will be 
of nature, her beauty and her peace, her wonder and 
her mystery, for nowhere else in this country is there 
so much to appeal to the fancy and stimulate the im- 
agination. The St. Johns river, with its unknown 
source, is only a part of a mysterious water system. 
There are subterranean rivers, deep and rapid, that 



y 



ii8 
flow, no one knows whence or whither. One leans 
over the edge of a deep pit, far below he sees the 
rushing water and perhaps drops some object into it, 
which is instantly carried out of sight. A feeling of 
awe and wonder comes over one, and perhaps a fancy 
that possibly on those mysterious waters, beings 
strange and unknown to us might float in fairy boats, 
or that on the unseen banks might be a city of the 
under world, inhabited by people who never see the 
light of our sun and stars. The silver spring of the 
Ocklawaha is one of the wonderful gems of beauty," 
set in the emerald green of the Florida forest, but the 
wonder of wonders is the Wakulla Spring. It is an 
hundred feet deep, and at the bottom is a rough bed 
of rocks in the centre of which is a dark, fathomless 
aperture out of which the wonderful water pours. 
Floating upon the surface in a boat, one seems sus- 
pended in the air, so marvelously clear and transpar- 
ent is the water. One cannot believe it is water but 
some element scarcely less ethereal than the atmos- 
phere, formed out of some mysterious combination 
of light and air. A hundred feet below, everything 
is plainly visible, every outline of the rocks, every 
pebble, the innumerable fishes that dart about in the 
transparent element, and most wonderful of all the 
rocks and the fishes and every object held in that 
marvelous water are glorified by brilliant prismatic 



colors. There is nothing else in all the world so won- 
derful and so beautiful. One cannot believe it to be 
a spring of ordinary water. It is a fairy fountain, 
something more than earthly, and if, as it is said, 
this is the spring believed by Ponce de Leon to be 
the fountain of eternal youth, one can scarcely at- 
tribute to the old Spaniard the fantastic imagination 
which such a fancy would ordinarily supply. The 
most prosaic mind might become fanciful and poeti- 
cal in the presence of such a marvel. 

To add to the wonders of this fairy lake, the skele-t 
ton of a mastodon was discovered in the bottom, ly- 
ing on the rocks as if it had lain down to die there. 
It was removed a few years ago to some museum, 
but it seems almost a desecration of nature's sacred 
mysteries, to remove the remains of this creature of 
the ancient world from its wonderful sepulchre. 

I intended these letters to be exclusively and ex- 
ceedingly practical, and I advised my readers to "dis- 
count all poetical descriptions" but I find myself 
wandering off into those aspects of Florida life, in 
which the price of land, the profits of orange grow- 
ing,, the relative value of muck and bone meal, or 
the depredations of 'possums or swine have nothing 
to do, into the dream land of Florida, its beauty and 
its peace, its marvel and mystery, and I forget the 
practical questions my northern readers will ask, and 



120 
the every day problems they will have to solve if 
they should any of them come here to live. Behind 
me in the far north, is the stress and strain of our 
overwrought life, around me here, still the endless 
questions of human relations and needs, business and 
social affairs, but for the moment I forget them all, 
and dwell with nature in her inner courts. I stand in 
awe and wonder before her mysterious processes, 
y and attune my spirit to her heavenly harmonies. 
And yet, I repeat my former advice, to ignore all 
this kind of description, for though facts and figures, 
if accurately reported, will convey to the mind of 
the reader, direct and clear, the idea of the wTiter, 
and the actual things and conditions that exist, there 
is nothing so vague and elusive and impossible to 
transmit, from one mind to another as impressions 
received through the sense of beauty and the imagin- 
ation. A world of loveliness and mystery and food 
for thought will exist for one person w^here another 
will perceive nothing but commonplace objects. 
/ There are thousands of persons who see nothing in 
Florida but water and sand, and for them the fasci- 
nation that is like a spell over the minds of others 
does not exist at all. Their minds are of a different 
order, less imaginative, less susceptible to the influ- 
ences of nature, and only influenced by practical 
considerations. 



121 

Again, there are persons who are not deficient in 
imagination and sense of beauty, yet are not, so to 
speak, en rapport with the spirit of nature here. It 1/ 
does not speak to them, does not awaken an eclio in 
their souls, as perhaps some different order of natural 
beauty might do. Regarding everything, as we 
must, through the medium of our own ideas and 
tastes, the impressions we receive are necessarily so 
colored by them that no one can safely assume that 
another person will be influenced by the same cause, 
in the same manner or in the same degree as himself. 
So I advise no one to read this letter with an}' cer- 
tainty of being impressed, as I have been, by these 
phases of Florida life, for, more than any other con- 
dition of life which I have known, they depend upon 
the nature of the medium through which they are re- 
garded. So strangely diverse are the impressions 
received by different persons, that it almost seems as 
if Morida is a capricious fairy, who beams with a 
face of loveliness and light upon those who love her, 
and whom she loves, but scowls upon those who have 
failed to win her good will. Her adopted children 1/ 
she leads into paths of beauty and enchantment, 
glowing with flowers and shining with dew-drops, but 
the others she leaves to the sand and lizards. C) 
fairy mother! beautiful and beneficent! happ)- are 
they who have found their way to tin' loxing heart, 



122 

for however far they may wander, into whatever stony 
paths their feet may lead them, whatever ills may 
befall them, they can come back to thee, and if weary 
and footsore, sick and sad, they will find on thy warm 
bosom rest and peace and in thy breath the balm of 
healing. 





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